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ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE 

CHURCH AND STATE 

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA 
OF EACH 

II 
LAY SERMONS , 

I. THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL f 
II. " BLESSED ARE YE THAT SOW BESIDE 
ALL WATERS' 

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 

EDITED FROM THE AUTHOR'S CORRECTED COPIES WITH NOTES 
BY HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE ESQ. M.A. 




LONDON 

WILLIAM PICKERING 

1889 



■£?* 



s 



« that our Clergy did but know and see that then tithes 
and riebes belong to them as officers and functtonanes of the 
Nationalty.-as clerks, and not exclusively as theolog.ans, and 
not at all as ministers of the Gospel ;-but that they are l.ke- 
ti e mtisters of the Church of Christ, ^.to.^ 
an.l the nowers of that Church are no more alienated or aflectect 
b» thehb Ing at the same time the Established Clergy, than 
OY the common coincidence of their being justices of the peace, 
or helrsTo an estate, or stock-holders! The Rom.sh dmnex 
placed the Church above the Scriptures: our present dmnes 

^Bu^nl andhU great contemporaries had not yet learnt 
to be afraid of announcing and « forcing Jj-*-^ * *J 
Church, distinct from, and coordinate with, the Sc " ptUreS ;/, he 
,s one evil consequence, though most unnecessarily so of the 
,n°on of the Church of Christ with the National Church and 
o 'Z claims of the Christian pastor and preacher with tW 
legal and constitutional rights and revenues of the , officers o 
♦£« xr«rt.m..l Clerisv Our Clergymen, in thinking of their legal 
right! forget thtTrigMs of theTrs which depend on no human 
law at all."— Literary Remains, vol. m. p. US. 



f. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANB. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Preface > ix 

Advertisement 1 

Church and State, Part 1 7 

Church of Christ 121 

Church of Antichrist 141 

Church and State, Part II 157 

Notes on the History of Enthusiasm 176 

Demosius and Mystes 184 

Statesman's Manual 201 

Appendix (A.) 257 

(B.) 258 

(C.) 284 

(D.) .;. 286 

(E.) 292 

** Blessed are ye that sow beside all Waters" 303 

Introduction 305 



PREFACE 
TO THE CHURCH AND STATE. 



A recollection of the value set upon the fol- 
lowing little work by its Author,* combined with 
a deep sense of the wisdom and importance of the 
positions laid down in it, will, it is hoped, be 
thought to justify the publication of a few preli- 
minary remarks, designed principally to remove 
formal difficulties out of the path of a reader not 
previously acquainted with Mr. Coleridge's writ- 
ings, nor conversant with the principles of his 
philosophy. The truth is that, although the Au- 
thor's plan is well defined and the treatment strictly 
progressive, there is in some parts a want of de- 
tailed illustration and express connexion, which 
weakens the impression of the entire work on the 
generality of readers. " If," says Mr. Maurice, 
*' I were addressing a student who was seeking to 
make up his mind on the question, without being 
previously biassed by the views of any particular 
party, I could save myself this trouble by merely 
referring him to the work of Mr. Coleridge, on 
the Idea of Church and State, published shortly 

* See Table Talk, 2nd edit. p. 5, note. 



X PREFACE TO THE 

after the passing of the Roman Catholic Bill. The 
hints respecting the nature of the Christian Church 
which are thrown out in that work are only suffi- 
cient to make us wish that the Author had deve- 
loped his views more fully ; but the portion of it 
which refers to the State seems to me in the 
highest degree satisfactory. When I use the word 
satisfactory, I do not mean that it will satisfy the 
wishes of any person who thinks that the epithets 
teres atque rotundus are the highest that can be 
applied to a scientific work ; who expects an author 
to furnish him with a complete system which he 
can carry away in his memory, and, after it has 
received a few improvements from himself, can 
hawk it about to the public or to a set of admiring 
disciples. Men of this description would regard 
Mr. Coleridge's book as disorderly and fragmen- 
tary ; but those who have some notion of what 
Butler meant when he said, that the best writer 
would be he who merely stated his premisses, and 
left his readers to work out the conclusions for 
themselves ; — those who feel that they want just 
the assistance which Socrates offered to his scho- 
lars — assistance, not in providing them with 
thoughts, but in bringing forth into the light 
thoughts which they had within them before; — 
these will acknowledge that Mr. Coleridge has 
only deserted the common high way of exposition, 
that he might follow more closely the turnings and 
windings which the mind of an earnest thinker 
makes when it is groping after the truth to which 



CHURCH AND STATE. XI 

he wishes to conduct it. To them, therefore, the 
book is satisfactory by reason of those very quali- 
ties which make it alike unpleasant to the formal 
schoolman and to the man of the world. And, 
accordingly, scarcely any book, published so re- 
cently and producing so little apparent effect, has 
really exercised a more decided influence over the 
thoughts and feelings of men who ultimately rule 
the mass of their countrymen. "* 

Under these circumstances, the following argu- 
ment or summary of the fundamental and more 
complicated portion of the work may be service- 
able to the ingenuous but less experienced reader. 

I. The constitution of the State and the Church 
is treated according to the Idea of each. By the 
Idea of the State or Church is here meant that 
conception, which is not abstracted from any par- 
ticular form or mode in which either may happen 
to exist at any given time, nor yet generalized 
from any number or succession of such forms or 
modes, but which is produced by a knowledge or 
sense of the ultimate aim of each. This idea, or 
sense of the ultimate aim, may exist, and power- 
fully influence a man's thoughts and actions, with- 
out his being able to express it in definite words, 
and even without his being distinctly conscious of 
its indwelling. A few may possess ideas in this 

* Kingdom of Christ, vol. iii. p. 2. A work of singular 
originality and power. 



Xll PREFACE TO THE 

meaning; — the generality of mankind are pos- 
sessed by them. In either case an idea, so under- 
stood, is in order of thought always and of necessity 
contemplated as antecedent,— a mere conception, 
strictly defined as an abstraction or generalization 
from one or more particular forms or modes, is ne- 
cessarily posterior, — in order of thought to the thing 
thus conceived. And though the idea is in its nature 
a prophecy, yet it must be carefully remembered 
that the particular form, construction, or model, 
best fitted to render the idea intelligible to a third 
person, is not necessarily — perhaps, not l^ost com- 
monly — the mode or form in which it actually 
arrives at realization. For in consequence of the 
imperfection of means and materials in all the 
works of man, a law of compensation and a prin- 
ciple of compromise are perpetually active ; and it 
is the first condition of a sound philosophy of State 
to recognize the wide extent of the one, the ne- 
cessity of the other, and the frequent occurrence 
of both. 

II. The word State is used in two senses, — p 
larger, in which it comprises, and a narrower, in 
which it is opposed to, the National Church. A 
Constitution is the ideal attribute of a State in the 
larger sense, as a body politic having the principle 
of its unity within itself; and it is the law or 
principle which prescribes the means and condi- 
tions by and under which that unity is established 
and preserved. The Constitution, therefore, of 
this Nation comprises the idea of a Church and a 



CHURCH AND STATE. Xlll 

State in the narrower sense, placed in simple an- 
tithesis one to another. The unity of the State, 
in this latter sense, results from the equipoise and 
interdependence of th<j two great opposite interests 
of every such State, its Permanence and its Pro- 
gression. The permanence of a State is connected 
with the land ; its progression with the mercan- 
tile, manufacturing, distributive, and professional 
classes. The first class is subdivided into w r hat our 
law books have called Major and Minor Barons ; — 
both of these subdivisions, as such, being opposed 
to the representatives of the progressive interest 
of the nation, yet the latter of them drawing more 
nearly to the antagonist order than the former. 
Upon these facts the principle of the Constitution 
of the State, in its narrower sense, was established. 
The balance of permanence and progression was 
secured by a legislature of two Houses ; the first, 
consisting wholly of the Major Barons or land- 
holders ; the second, of the Minor Barons or 
^knights, as the representatives of the remaining 
Janded community, together with the Burgesses, 
as representing the commercial, manufacturing, 
distributive, and professional classes — the latter 
constituting the effectual majority in number. The 
King, in whom the executive power was vested, 
was in regard to the interests of the State, in its 
antithetic sense, the beam of the scales. 

This is the Idea of that State, not its history ; 
it has been the standard or aim, the Lex Legum, 
which, in the very first law of State ever promul- 



XIV PREFACE TO THE 

gated in the land, was pre-supposed as the ground 
of that first law. 

III. But the English Constitution results from 
the harmonious opposition of two institutions, the 
State, in the narrower sense, and the Church. 
For as by the composition of the one provision was 
alike made for permanence, and progression in 
wealth and personal freedom ; to the other was 
committed the only remaining interest of the State 
in its larger sense, that of maintaining and ad- 
vancing the moral cultivation of the people them- 
selves, without which neither of the former could 
continue to exist. 

IV. It was common, at least to the Scandinavian, 
Keltic, and Gothic, with the Semitic tribes, if not 
universal in all the primitive races, that in taking 
possession of a new country, and in the division 
of the land into heritable estates among the indi- 
vidual warriors or heads of families, a Reserve 
should be made for the Nation itself. The sum 
total of these heritable portions is called the Pro- 
priety, the Reserve the Nationalty. These were 
constituent factors of the commonwealth ; the ex- 
istence of the one being the condition of the right- 
fulness of the other. But the wealth appropriated 
was not so entirely a property as not to remain, 
to a certain extent, national ; nor was the wealth 
reserved so exclusively national as not to admit 
an individual tenure. The settlement of the Na- 
tionalty in one tribe only of the Hebrew confede- 
racy, subservient as it was to a higher purpose, 



CHURCH AND STATE. XV 

was in itself a deviation from the idea, and a main 
cause of the comparatively little effect which the 
Levitical establishment produced on the moral and 
intellectual character of the Jewish people during 
the whole period of their existence as an inde- 
pendent state. 

V. The National ty was reserved for the main- 
tenance of a permanent class or order, the Clerisy, 
Clerks, Clergy, or Church of the Nation. This 
class comprised the learned of all denominations, 
the professors of all those arts and sciences, the 
possession and application of which constitute the 
civilization of a country. Theology formed only 
a part of the objects of the National Church. The 
theologians took the lead, indeed, and deservedly 
so ; — not because they were priests, but because 
under the name of theology were contained the 
study of languages, history, logic, ethics, and a 
philosophy of ideas ; because the science of the- 
ology itself was the root of the knowledges that 
civilize man, and gave unity and the circulating 
sap of life to all other sciences ; and because, 
under the same name were comprised all the main 
aids, instruments, and materials of National Educa- 
tion. Accordingly, a certain smaller portion of the 
functionaries of the Clerisy were to remain at the 
fountain heads of the humanities, cultivating and 
enlarging the knowledge already possessed, watch- 
ing over the interests of physical and moral science, 
and the instructors of all the remaining more nu- 
merous classes of the order. These last were to 



XVI PREFACE TO THE 



be distributed throughout the country, so as not to 
leave even the smallest integral division without 
a resident guide, guardian, and teacher, diffusing 
through the whole community the knowledge in- 
dispensable for the understanding of its rights, 
and for the performance of the correspondent 
duties. But neither Christianity, nor a fortiori, 
any particular scheme of theology supposed to be 
deduced from it, forms any essential part of the 
being of a National Church, however conducive it 
may be to its well being. A National Church may 
exist, and has existed, without, because before, the 
institution of the Christian Church, as the Levi- 
tical Church in the Hebrew, and the Druidical 
in the Keltic, constitutions may prove. 

VI. But two distinct functions do not necessa- 
rily imply or require two different functionaries : 
on the contrary, the perfection of each may require 
the union of both in the same person. And in the 
instance now in question, as great and grievous 
errors have arisen from confounding the functions 
of the National Church with those of the Church 
of Christ, so fearfully great and grievous will be 
the evils from the success of an attempt to separate 
them. 

VII. In process of time, however, and as a na- 
tural consequence of the expansion of the mercan- 
tile and commercial order, the students and pro- 
fessors of those sciences and sorts of learning, the 
use and necessity of which were perpetual to the 
Nation, but only occasional to the Individuals, gra- 



CHURCH AND STATE. XV11 

dually detached themselves from the National Cle- 
risy, and passed over, as it were, to that order, 
with the growth and thriving condition of which 
their particular emoluments were found to increase 
in equal proportion. And hence by slow degrees 
the learned in the several departments of law, me- 
dicine, architecture and the like, contributed to 
form under the common name of Professional, an 
intermediate link between the national clerisy and 
the simple burgesses. 

VIII. But this circumstance cannot alter the 
tenure, or annul the rights, of those who remained, 
and who, as members of the permanent learned 
class, were planted throughout the realm as the 
immediate agents and instruments in the work of 
increasing and perpetuating the civilization of the 
nation ; and who, thus fulfilling the purposes for 
which the Nationalty was reserved, are entitled to 
remain its usufructuary trustees. The proceeds of 
the Nationalty might, indeed, in strictness, if it 
could ever be expedient, be rightfully transferred 
to functionaries other than such as are also minis- 
ters of the Church of Christ. But the Nationalty 
itself cannot, without foul wrong to the nation, be 
alienated from its original purposes ; and those who 
being duly appointed thereto, exercise the func- 
tions and perform the duties attached to the Na- 
tionalty, possess a right to the same by a title to 
which the thunders from Mount Sinai might give 
greater authority, but not additional evidence. 

IX. Previously to the sixteenth century, large 

b 



XV111 PREFACE TO THE 

masses were alienated from the heritable proprieties 
of the realm, and confounded with the National ty 
under the common name of Church property. At 
the period of the Reformation a re-transfer of these 
took place, and rightfully so : but together with, 
and under pretext of, this restoration to the State 
of what properly belonged to it, a wholesale usur- 
pation took place of a very large portion of that 
which belonged to the Church. This was a sacri- 
legious robbery on the Nation, and a deadly wound 
on the constitution of the State at large. The 
balance of the reserved and appropriated wealth of 
the Nation was deranged, and thus the former be- 
came unequal to the support of the entire burthen 
of popular civilization originally intended to be 
borne by it.* Barely enough — indeed, less than 
enough — was left for the effectual maintenance of 
that primary class of the Clerisy, which had not 
fallen off into separate professions, but continued 
to be the proper servants of the public in producing 



* " Give back to the Church what the Nation originally 
consecrated to its use, and it ought then to be charged with 
the education of the people ; but half of the original revenue 
has been already taken by force from her, or lost to her 
through desuetude, legal decision, or public opinion : and 
are those whose very houses and parks are part and parcel 
of what the Nation designed for the general purposes of the 
Clergy, to be heard, when they argue for making the Church 
support, out of her diminished revenues, institutions, the in- 
tended means for maintaining which they themselves hold 
under the sanction of legal robbery 1" Table Talk, Pref. p. 
xvi. 2nd edit. 



CHURCH AND STATE. XIX 

and reproducing 1 , in preserving, promoting and per- 
fecting all the necessary sources and conditions of 
the civilization of the Nation itself.* 

X. Though many things may detract from the 
comparative fitness of individuals, or of particular 
classes, for the trust and functions of the Nation- 
alty, there are only two absolute disqualifications ; 
— allegiance to a foreign power, or the acknow- 
ledgment of any other visible head of the National 
Church but the King ; — and compulsory celibacy, 
in connection with, and dependence on, a foreign 
and extra-national head. 

XI. The legitimate objects of the power of the 
King and the two Houses of Parliament, as consti- 
tuting the State, in its special and antithetic sense, 
comprise, according to the idea, all the interests 
and concerns of the Propriety, and rightfully those 
alone. 

XII. The King, again, is the Head of the Na- 
tional Clerisy, and the supreme trustee of the 
Nationalty ; the power of which in relation to its 
proper objects is rightfully exercised, according to 
the idea, by the King and the two Houses of Con- 
vocation, and by them alone. The proper objects 
of this power are mentioned in No. V. 

XIII. The Coronation Oath neither does, nor 
can, bind the conscience of the Kino- in matters of 



* See an approach to an expression of the Author's idea 
of the National Church thus regarded, in the Bishop of 
London's late Charge, Oct. 1838, p. 2, &c. 



XX PREFACE TO THE 

faith. But it binds him to refuse his consent 
(without which no change in the existing law can 
be effected) to any measure subverting or tending 
to subvert the safety and independence of the Na- 
tional Church, or which may expose the realm to 
the danger of a return of that foreign Usurper, mis- 
named spiritual, from which it has with so many 
sacrifices emancipated itself. And previously to 
the ceremonial act which announces the King the 
only lawful and sovereign head of both the Church 
and the State, this oath is administered to him re- 
ligiously as the representative person and crowned 
majesty of the Nation ;- — religiously ; — for the mind 
of the Nation, existing only as an idea, can act 
distinguishably on the ideal powers alone, — that 
is, on the reason and conscience. 



The several other points comprised in the re- 
mainder of this work, though of great interest and 
importance, require neither analysis nor comment 
for their perfect comprehension. But it will na- 
turally occur to the reader to consider how far the 
idea of the Church and of its relation to the State 
presented in these pages coincides with either of 
the two celebrated systems, those of Hooker and 
War burton, which, under one shape or another, 
have divided the opinions of thinking persons up to 
the present day. 

According to Hooker, the Church is one body, 
—the essential unity of which consists in, and 



CHURCH AND STATE. XXI 



is known by, an external profession of Chris- 
tianity ? without regard in any respect had to the 
moral virtues or spiritual graces of any member 
of that body. " If by external profession they 
be Christians, then are they of the visible Church 
of Christ : and Christians by external profession 
they are all, whose mark of recognizance hath in 
it those things which we have mentioned, yea, 
although they be impious idolaters, wicked he- 
retics, persons excommunicable, yea, and cast out 
for notorious improbity. Such withal we deny not 
to be the imps and limbs of Satan, even as long as 
they continue such." (E. P. III. c. i. s. 7. Kebles 
edit. vol. i. p. 431.) 

With this Warburton and Coleridge in general 
terms agree. {Alliance, &c. II. c. ii. s. 2. — Church 
and State, p. 139.) And the words of the nineteenth 
Article, though apparently of a more restricted 
import, may be presumed not to mean less. 

But, further, Hooker insists that the Church, 
existing in any particular country, and the State 
are one and the same society, contemplated in two 
different relations, u A Commonwealth we name 
it simply in regard of some regiment or policy 
under which men live ; a Church for the truth of 
that religion which they profess. * * * When we 
oppose the Church, therefore, and the Common- 
wealth in a Christian society, we mean by the 
Commonwealth that society with relation unto all 
the public affairs thereof, only the matter of true 
religion excepted ; by the Church, the same society 



XX11 PREFACE TO THE 

with only reference unto the matter of true reli- 
gion, without any other affairs besides : when that 
society, which is both a Church and a Common- 
wealth, doth flourish in those things which belong 
unto it as a Commonwealth, we then say, * the 
Commonwealth doth flourish ;' when in those things 
which concern it as a Church, ' the Church doth 
flourish ;' when in both, then ' the Church and 
Commonwealth flourish together.' " (E. P. VIII. 
C. i. s. 5. vol. iii. p. 420 — 1.) 

To this view Warburton, as is well known, is 
directly opposed. He argues that, although two 
societies may be so closely related to each other 
as to have one common supposition, — that is, the 
same natural persons being exclusively members 
of each, — the societies themselves, as such, are 
factitious bodies, and each of them must therefore 
of necessity be distinct in personality and will from 
the other. " The artificial man, society, is much 
unlike the natural ; who being created for several 
ends hath several interests to pursue, and several 
relations to consult, and may therefore be consi- 
dered under several capacities, as a religious, a 
civil, and a rational animal ; and yet they all make 
but one and the same man. But one and the same 
political society cannot be considered in one view, 
as a religious — in another, as a civil — and in 
another, as a literary — community. One society 
can be precisely but one of these communities." 
(Alliance, &c. ii. c. v.) Accordingly Warburton 
insists, in opposition to Hooker, that the Puritan 



CHURCH AND STATE. XXU1 

premiss, — that the Church and the State are distinct 
and originally independent societies, — was and is 
the truth ; but he denies the Puritan inference, that 
such independency must therefore be perpetual ; — 
affirming the existence of an alliance between these 
two societies upon certain terms ; andaresultingmu- 
tual inter-dependency of one on the other; whereby 
the consequence from the position of the Puritans — 
an imperium in imperio, or subjugation of the State 
to the Church, — and the consequence from the 
position of Hooker — the enslavement of the Church 
by the State — are equally precluded. The Church 
subordinates itself to the State upon faith of cer- 
tain stipulations for support by the latter ; and if 
the State violates, or withdraws from the fulfill- 
ment of, those stipulations, the Church is thereby 
remitted to her original independence.* 

Now so far as the distinct inter-dependency of 
the State and the Church is in question, Coleridge 
agrees with Warburton. But the peculiarity of 
his system, as expressly laid down in this work 
and incidentally mentioned in many of his other 
writings, — a peculiarity fruitful in the most im- 

* It is worthy of remark that, if Warburton had lived in 
these days, and had adhered to the principles advocated by 
him in this treatise, he must several years ago have declared 
the terms of convention between the Church and State in 
this country violated by the latter, and the alliance of the 
two at an end, See his third book, and especially the se- 
cond chapter. It is to be observed, also, that Warburton 
confounds the Christian with the Established Church as 
much as Hooker. See B. II. c. iii. 3. 



XXIV PREFACE TO THE 

portant consequences — is grounded on a distinction 
taken between the visible Church of Christ, as 
localized in any Christian country, and the National 
or Established Church of that country. Distinc- 
tion, be it observed, not separation, — for the two 
ideas 

— bene conveniunt, et in una sede morantur ; 

" they not only may co-exist in the same suppositum, 
but may require an identity of subject in order to 
the complete development of the perfections of 
either. According to Coleridge, then, the Chris- 
tian Church is not a kingdom or realm of this 
world, nor a member of any such kingdom or 
realm ; it is not opposed to any particular State in 
the large or narrow sense of the word ; it is in no 
land national, and the national Reserve is not en- 
trusted to its charge. It is, on the contrary, the 
opposite to the World only ; the counterforce to 
the evils and defects of States, as such, in the 
abstract, — asking of any particular State neither 
wages nor dignities, but demanding protection, 
that is, to be let alone. 

With so much therefore of the preceding and all 
other theories as considers any branch of the 
Church of Christ, as such, in the character of a 
National Establishment, and arrogates to it, as 
such, upon any ground, worldly riches, rank or 
power — Coleridge is directly at variance. But we 
have already seen (v. vi. vn. vjii.) that there 
is, nevertheless, in this and in almost every other 



CHURCH AND STATE. XXV 

country raised above the level of barbarism a 
Church, which is strictly and indefeasibly National; 
and in the ideal history herein presented of its ori- 
gin and primary elements, its endowment, its uses, 
duties, ends, and objects, its relation to the State, 
and its present representatives, a solemn warning- 
is recorded of the fatal consequences of either con- 
founding it with, or separating it from, the visible 
Church of Christ. 

The Christian Church is a public and visible 
community, having ministers of its own, whom the 
State can neither constitute nor degrade, and whose 
maintenance amongst Christians is as secure as 
the command of Christ can make it : for so hath 
the Lord ordained that they which preach the 
Gospel should live of the Gospel. (1. Cor. ix. 
14.) The National Church is a public and visible 
community, having ministers whom the Nation, 
through the agency of a Constitution, hath created 
trustees of a reserved national fund, upon fixed 
terms and with defined duties, and whom, in case 
of breach of those terms or dereliction of those 
duties, the Nation, through the same agency, may 
discharge. " If the former be Ecclesia, the com- 
munion of such as are called out of the World, 
that is, in reference to the especial ends and pur- 
poses of that communion ; the latter might more 
expressively have been called Enclesia, or an 
order of men chosen in and of the realm, and con- 
stituting an estate of the realm/' 

Now there is no reason why the ministers of the 



XXVI PREFACE TO THE 

one Church may not also be ministers of the other : 
there are many reasons why they should be. 

When therefore it is objected that Christ's king- 
dom is not of this world, it is admitted to be true ; 
but the text is shown to have no application in the 
way of impeachment of the titles, emoluments or 
authorities, of an institution which rightfully is of 
this world, and would not answer the end of its 
constitution if it ceased to belong to, and in a cer- 
tain sense to sympathize with, the world. When 
again it is alleged that " the best service which men 
of power can do to Christ is without any more cere- 
mony to sweep all and leave the Church as bare 
as in the day it was first born" — " that if we give 
God our hearts and affections, our goods are better 
bestowed otherwise," * the spirit and reason of 
that allegation are humbly submitted to God's own 
judgment ; but it is at the same time confidently 
charged in reply, that the notion of the Church, 
as the established instructress of the people, being 
improved in efficiency by the reduction of its mi- 
nisters to a state bordering on mendicancy — can 
in its flagrant folly be alone attributed to that 
meanness of thought, which is at once the fruit 
and the punishment of minds enslaved to party and 
the world, and rendered indifferent to all truth by 
an affected toleration of every form of error. When 
further it is said that the Bishops of the Church of 
Christ have no vocation to interfere in the legisla- 

* Hooker, B. V. lxxiv. 3 7. 



CHURCH AND STATE. XXV11 

tion of the country, it is granted ; but with this 
parallel assertion, that the Prelates of a National 
Establishment, charged with the vast and awful task 
of preserving, increasing and perpetuating the 
moral culture of the people, have a call to be pre- 
sent, advise, and vote in the National Council, 
which can only cease to be a right when the re- 
presentatives of the dearest national interest are 
denied a voice in the national assembly; and which 
is no more impaired by the fact of those Prelates 
sustaining in their individual persons another and 
still more sacred character than by their being 
members of a literary club or a botanical society. 
When, finally, it is insisted to be contrary to jus- 
tice to compel those who dissent from a religious 
system either as to its doctrines or its forms of 
worship, to contribute to the maintenance of its 
priests and ministers, it is not denied ; but it is 
withal maintained, that a national dedication of 
funds for the support of a determinate class of men, 
with the duty of national civilization to perform, 
can no more be vacated or qualified by reason 
of the voluntary secession of such dissenters from 
that religious system, because the seceders under- 
stand the character and obligation of that duty in 
a way of their own, than the rights of Parliament 
to levy taxes for the protection of our independence 
from foreign aggression can be affected by the 
dogma of rich philanthropists that war is unlawful, 
and to pay a shilling towards its support an offence 
against God. 



XXV111 PREFACE TO THE 

But after all, it is urged, the funds set apart by 
the Nation for the support of the National Church 
are now in fact received by the ministers of the 
Church of Christ in this country ! True ; but, ac- 
cording to the idea, — and that idea involves a his- 
tory and a prophecy of the truth — it is not because 
they are such ministers that they receive those 
funds, but because, being now the only representa- 
tives, as formerly the principal constituents, of the 
National Clerisy or Church, they alone have a 
commission to carry on the work of national culti- 
vation on national grounds — transmuting and in- 
tegrating all that the separate professions have 
achieved in science or art — but, with a range tran- 
scending the limits of professional views, or local or 
temporary interests, applying the product simple 
and defecated, to the strengthening and subliming 
of the moral life of the Nation itself. 

Such a Church is a principal instrument of the 
divine providence in the institution and govern- 
ment of human society. But it is not that Church 
against which we know that Hell shall not pre- 
vail. 

1 For when the Nation, fatigued with the weight 
of dear and glorious recollections, shall resolve to 
repudiate its corporate existence and character, and 
to resolve its mystic unity into the breathing 
atoms that crowd the surface of the land, — then 
the national and ancestral Church of England will 
have an end. But it cannot be destroyed before. 
It lies within the folds of that marvellous Consti- 



CHURCH AND STATE. XXIX 

tution, which patriots have out -watched the stars to 
develope and to protect, and is not separable from it. 
The time may come when it may seem fit to God 
that both shall perish, for ever, or for a season ; — 
and the sure token of that time will be, when the 
divorce of scientific from religious education shall 
have had its full Avork throughout the length and 
the breadth of the land. Then although the Church 
of England may fall, the Church of Christ in En- 
gland will stand erect ; and the distinction, lost now 
in a common splendour, will be better seen and 
more poignantly felt by that darkening World to 
which the Christian Church must become a more 
conspicuous opposite. 

ov yap viv Ovard 

(J)V(Jig CLVEpUV ETIKTSV, OVCS 

\ii\v 7T0T8 XciOa KaraKoiiiaGEC 
fieyag kv r av ry Qebg y 
ovfie yrjpd<TKSi. 



Lincoln's Inn, 

Nov. 29, 1838. 



ON THE 

CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH 
AND STATE 

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH 



ADVERTISEMENT.* 

The occasion of this little work will be sufficiently 
explained by an extract from a letter addressed 
by me to a friend a few years ago : — " You ex- 
press your wonder that I, who have so often avowed 
my dislike to the introduction even of the word, 
religion, in any special sense, in Parliament, or 
from the mouth of lawyer or statesman, speaking 
as such ; who have so earnestly contended that 
religion cannot take on itself the character of law 
without ipso facto ceasing to be religion, and that 
law could neither recognize the obligations of re- 
ligion for its principles, nor become the pretended 
guardian and protector of the Faith, without de- 
generating into inquisitorial tyranny ; — that 1, who 
have avowed my belief, that if Sir Matthew Hale's 
doctrine, t that the Bible was a part of the law of 



* To the first edition. — Ed. 

t Hale's expression was " that Christianity is part of 
B 



2 ADVERTISEMENT. 

the land, had been uttered by a Puritan divine 
instead of a Puritan judge, it would have been 
quoted at this day, as a specimen of Puritanical 
nonsense and bigotry ; — you express your wonder 
that I, with all these heresies on my head, should 
yet withstand the measure of Roman Catholic 
emancipation, as it is called, and join in opposing 
Sir Francis Burdett's intended Bill for the repeal 
of the disqualifying statutes ! And you conclude 
by asking : but is this true ? 

" My answer is : Here are two questions. To 
the first, namely, is it true that I am unfriendly to 
what you call Catholic emancipation ? — I reply ; 
No, the contrary is the truth. There is no incon- 
sistency, however, in approving the thing, and 
yet having my doubts respecting the manner ; in 
desiring the same end, and yet scrupling the means 
proposed for its attainment. When you are called 
in to a consultation, you may perfectly agree with 
another physician respecting the existence of the 
malady and the expedience of its removal, and yet 



the laws of England ; and therefore to reproach the Christian 
religion, is to speak in subversion of the law." The King 
v. Taylor. Ventr. 293, Keble, 607. But Sir Edward Coke 
had many years before said that " Christianity is part and 
parcel of the Common Law/' — Ed. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 3 

differ respecting* the medicines and the method of 
cure. To your second question, namely, am I un- 
friendly to the present measure ? — I shall return an 
answer no less explicit. Why I cannot return as 
brief a one, you will learn from the following pages 
transcribed, for the greater part, from a paper drawn 
up by me some years ago, at the request of a 
gentleman* — (that I have been permitted to call 
him my friend, I place among the highest honours 
of my life), — an old and intimate acquaintance of 
the late Mr. Canning's ; and which paper, had it 
been finished before he left England, it was his 
intention to have laid before the late Lord Liver- 
pool. 

" From the period of the Union with Ireland, 
to the present hour, 1 have neglected no oppor- 
tunity of obtaining correct information from books 
and from men respecting the facts that bear on 
the question, whether they regard the existing 
state of things, or the causes and occasions of it ; 
nor, during this time, has there been a single 
speech of any note, on either side, delivered, or re- 
ported as delivered, in either House of Parliament, 
which I have not needfully and thoughtfully pe- 



The Risrht Honorable John Hookham Frere. — Ed. 



4 ADVERTISEMENT. 

rused, abstracting and noting down every argu 
ment that was not already on my list, which, I 
need not say, has for many years past had but few 
accessions to number. Lastly, my conclusion I 
have subjected, year after year, to a fresh revisal, 
conscious but of one influence likely to warp my 
judgment : and this is the pain, I might with 
truth add the humiliation, of differing from men 
whom I loved and revered, and whose superior 
competence to judge aright in this momentous 
cause I knew and delighted to know; and this 
aggravated by the reflection, that in receding from 
the Burkes, Cannings, and Lansdownes, I did not 
move a step nearer to the feelings and opinions of 
their antagonists. With this exception, it is 
scarcely possible, I think, to conceive an individual 
less under the influences of the ordinary disturbing 
forces of the judgment than your poor friend; or 
from situation, pursuits, and habits of thinking, 
from age, state of health and temperament, less 
likely to be drawn out of his course by the under- 
currents of hope, or fear, of expectation or wish. 
But least of all, by predilection for any particular 
sect or party : for wherever I look, in religion or 
in politics, I seem to see a world of power and 
talent wasted on the support of half truths, too 
often the most mischievous, because least sus- 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



pected, of errors. This may result from the spirit 
and habit of partizanship, the supposed inseparable 
accompaniment of a free state, which pervades all 
ranks, and is carried into all subjects. But what- 
ever may be its origin, one consequence seems to 
be, that every man is in a bustle, and, except 
under the sting of excited or alarmed self-interest, 
scarcely any one in earnest. ,, 

I had collected materials for a third part under 
the title of " What is to be done now ?" — con- 
sisting of illustrations, from the history of the 
English and Scottish Churches, of the consequences 
of the ignorance or contravention of the principles, 
which I have attempted to establish in the first 
part of this work ; and of practical deductions 
from these principles, addressed chiefly to the 
English clergy. But I felt the embers glowing 
under the white ashes ; and, on reflection, I have 
considered it more expedient that the contents 
of this volume should be altogether in strict 
conformity with the title ; that they should be, 
and profess to be, no more and no other than 
ideas of the constitution in Church and State. 
And thus I may without inconsistency entreat 
the friendly reader to bear in mind the dis- 
tinction enforced in these pages, between the 
exhibition of an idea, and the way of acting on 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



the same ; and that the scheme or diagram best 
suited to make the idea clearly understood may- 
be very different from the form in which it is or 
may be most adequately realized. And if the 
reasonings of this work should lead him to think 
that a strenuous opponent of the former attempts 
in Parliament may have given his support to the 
Bill lately passed into law without inconsistency, 
and without meriting the name of apostate, it may 
be to the improvement of his charity and good 
temper, and npt detract a tittle from his good sense 
or political penetration. 



PART I. 



ON THE 



CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH 
AND STATE, 

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH. 



THEEE IS A MYSTERY IN THE SOUL OF STATE, 

WHICH HATH AN OPERATION MORE DIVINE 

THAN OUR MERE CHRONICLERS DARE MEDDLE WITH. 

(Troil. and Cress, act iv. sc. 3. altered.— Erf.) 



ON THE 

CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH 
. AND STATE, 

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH. 

CHAPTER I. 

Prefatory remarks on the true import of the 
word, Idea; and what the Author means by 
the expression, " according to the idea." 

The Act lately passed for the admission of Roman 
Catholics into the Legislature* comes so near the 
mark to which my convictions and wishes have 
through my whole life, since earliest manhood, 
unwaveringly pointed, and has so agreeably dis- 
appointed my fears, that my first impulse w r as to 
suppress the pages, which I had written while the 
particulars of the Bill were yet unknown, in com- 
pliance with the request of an absent friend, who 
had expressed an anxiety " to learn from myself 
the nature and grounds of my apprehension, that 

* 10. G. IV. c 7. " An Act for the relief of His Ma- 
jesty's Roman Catholic subjects." — Ed, 



10 CONSTITUTION OF 

the measure would fail to effect the object imme- 
diately intended by its authors/' 

In answer to this I reply that the main ground 
of that apprehension is certainly much narrowed ; 
but as certainly not altogether removed. I refer 
to the securities. And, let it be understood, that 
in calling a certain provision hereafter specified, a 
security, I use the word comparatively, and mean 
no more, than that it has at least an equal claim 
to be so called, with any of those that have been 
hitherto proposed as such. Whether either one or 
the other deserve the name ; whether the thing 
itself is possible ; I leave undetermined. This 
premised, I resume my subject, and repeat that 
the main objection, from which my fears as to the 
practical results of the proposed Bill were derived, 
applies with nearly the same force to the Act it- 
self; though the fears themselves have, by the 
spirit and general character of the clauses, been 
considerably mitigated. The principle, the solemn 
recognition of which I deem indispensable as a 
security, and should be willing to receive as the 
only security — superseding the necessity, though 
possibly not the expediency, of any other, but 
itself by no other superseded— this principle is not 
formally recognized. It may perhaps be implied 
in one of the clauses (that which forbids the as- 
sumption of local titles by the Romish bishops*) ; 



* See ss. 24-5-6, prohibiting under a penalty the as- 
sumption of the titles of the bishoprics and other ecclesiastical 



CHURCH AND STATE. 11 

but this implication, even if really contained in the 
clause, and actually intended by its framers, is not 
calculated to answer the ends, and utterly inade- 
quate to supply the place, of the solemn and formal 
declaration which I had required, and which, with 
my motives and reasons for the same, it will be the 
object of the following pages to set forth. 

But to enable the reader fully to understand, 
and fairly to appreciate, my arguments, I must 
previously state (what I at least judge to be) the 
true idea of a Constitution, and, likewise, of a 
national Church. And in giving the essential 
character of the latter, I shall briefly specify its 
distinction from the Church of Christ, and its 
contra-distinction from a third form, which is 
neither national nor Christian, but irreconcileable 
with, and subversive of, both. By an idea 1 
mean (in this instance) that conception of a thing, 
which is not abstracted from any particular state, 
form, or mode, in which the thing may happen to 
exist at this or at that time ; nor yet generalized 
from any number or succession of such forms or 
modes ; but which is given by the knowledge of 
its ultimate aim. 

Only one observation I must be allowed to add ; 

dignities and offices ; the exhibition of the insignia of Romish 
priesthood, and the performance of any part of Romish 
worship or religious service, elsewhere than in the usual 
chapels. These enactments have been openly violated with 
impunity from the passing of the Relief Act to this dav. 
—Ed, 



12 CONSTITUTION OF 

that this knowledge, or sense, may very well exist, 
aye, and powerfully influence a man's thoughts and 
actions, without his being distinctly conscious of 
the same, much more without his being competent 
to express it in definite words. This, indeed, is 
one of the points which distinguish ideas from con- 
ceptions, both terms being used in their strict and 
proper significations. The latter, that is, a con- 
ception, consists in a conscious act of the under- 
standing, bringing any given object or impression 
into the same class with any number of other ob- 
jects or impressions by means of some character 
or characters common to them all. Cortcipimus , 
id est, capimus hoc cum illo ; — we take hold of 
both at once, we comprehend a thing, when we 
have learned to comprise it in a known class. On 
the other hand, it is the privilege of the few to 
possess an idea : of the generality of men, it might 
be more truly affirmed that they are possessed 
by it. 

What is here said, will, I hope, suffice as a 
popular explanation. For some of my readers, 
however, the following definition may not, perhaps, 
be useless or unacceptable. That which, contem- 
plated objectively (that is, as existing externally 
to the mind), we call a law ; the same contemplated 
subjectively (that is, as existing in a subject or 
mind), is an idea. Hence Plato often names ideas 
laws ; and Lord Bacon, the British Plato, describes 
the laws of the material universe as the ideas in 



CHURCH AND STATE. 13 

nature.* Quod in natura naturata lex, in na- 
tura naturante idea, dicitur. By way of illus- 
tration take the following. Every reader of Rous- 
seau, or of Hume's Essays, will understand me 
when I refer to the original social contract, as- 
sumed by Rousseau, and by other and wiser men 
before him, as the basis of all legitimate govern- 
ment. Now, if this be taken as the assertion of 
an historical fact, or as the application of a con- 
ception, generalized from ordinary compacts be- 
tween man and man, or nation and nation, to an 
alleged actual occurrence in the first ages of the 
world ; namely, the formation of a first contract, 
in which men should have covenanted with each 
other to associate, or in which a multitude should 
have entered into a compact with a few, the one 
to be governed and the other to govern under 
certain declared conditions; I shall run little 
hazard at this time of day in declaring the pre- 
tended fact a pure fiction, and the conception of 
such a fact an idle fancy. It is at once false and 
foolish. + For what if an original contract had 



* He autem (divine, mentis idee) sunt vera signacula 
Creatoris super creaturas, prout in materie per lineas veras et 
exquisitas imprimuntur et ierminantur. Kov. Org'. P. II. 124. 
— Ed. 

t I am not indeed certain that some operatical farce, 
under the name of a social contract or compact, may not 
haye been acted bv the Illuminati and constitution-manu- 
facturers at the close of the eighteenth century ; a period 
which how far it deserved the name, so complacently affixed 



14 CONSTITUTION OF 

actually been entered into and formally recorded ? 
Still I cannot see what addition of moral force 
would be gained by the fact. The same sense of 
moral obligation which binds us to keep it, must 
have pre-existed in the same force and in relation 
to the same duties, impelling our ancestors to make 
it. For what could it do more than bind the con- 
tracting parties to act for the general good, ac- 
cording to their best lights and opportunities ? 
It is evident that no specific scheme or consti- 
tution can derive any other claim to our reverence, 
than that which the presumption of its necessity 
or fitness for the general good shall give it ; and 
which claim of course ceases, or rather is reversed, 
as soon as this general presumption of its utility 
has given place to as general a conviction of the 
contrary. It is true, indeed, that from duties 
anterior to the formation of the contract, because 
they arise out of the very constitution of our hu- 
manity, which supposes the social state — it is true, 
that in order to a rightful removal of the institution 
or law thus agreed on, it is required that the con- 
viction of its inexpediency shall be as general as 
the presumption of its fitness was at the time of 
its establishment. This, the first of the two great 
paramount interests of the social state, that of 
permanence, demands ; but to attribute more than 



to it by contemporaries, of " this enlightened age," maybe 
doubted. That it was an age of enlighteners no man will 
deny. 



CHURCH AND STATE. 15 

this to any fundamental articles, passed into law 
by any assemblage of individuals, is an injustice 
to their successors, and a high offence against the 
other great interest of the social state, namely, 
its progressive improvement. The conception, 
therefore, of an original contract, is, I repeat, 
incapable of historic proof as a fact, and it is 
senseless as a theory. 

But if instead of the conception or theory of an 
original social contract, we say the idea of an 
ever-originating social contract, this is so certain 
and so indispensable, that it constitutes the w T hole 
ground of the difference between subject and serf, 
between a commonwealth and a slave-plantation. 
And this, again, is evolved out of the yet higher 
idea of person in contra-distinction to thing ; all 
social law and justice being grounded on the prin- 
ciple that a person can never, but by his own 
fault, become a thing, or, without grievous wrong, 
be treated as such ; and the distinction consisting 
in this, that a thing may be used altogether and 
merely as the means to an end ; but the person 
must always be included in the end : his interest 
must form a part of the object, a mean to which 
he by consent, that is, by his own act, makes 
himself. We plant a tree and we fell it ; we 
breed the sheep and we shear or we kill it ; in 
both cases wholly as means to our ends; for 
trees and animals are things. The wood-cutter 
and the hind are likewise employed as means, but 
on agreement, and that too an agreement of reci- 



16 CONSTITUTION OF 

procal advantage, which includes them as well as 
their employer in the end ; for they are persons. 
And the government, under which the contrary 
takes place, is not worthy to be called a state, if, 
as in the kingdom of Dahomey, it be unprogres- 
sive ; or only by anticipation, where, as in Russia, 
it is in advance to a better and more man-worthy 
order of things. Now, notwithstanding the late 
wonderful spread of learning through the commu- 
nity, and though the schoolmaster and the lecturer 
are abroad, the hind and the woodman may, very 
conceivably, pass from cradle to coffin without 
having once contemplated this idea, so as to be 
conscious of the same. And there would be even 
an improbability in the supposition that they pos- 
sessed the power of presenting this idea to the 
minds of others, or even to their own thoughts, 
verbally as a distinct proposition. But no man, 
who has ever listened to laborers of this rank, in 
any alehouse, over the Saturday night's jug of 
beer, discussing the injustice of the present rate 
of wages, and the iniquity of their being paid in 
part out of the parish poor-rates, will doubt for a 
moment that they are fully possessed by the idea. 
In close, though not perhaps obvious, connec- 
tion with this is the idea of moral freedom, as the 
ground of our proper responsibility. Speak to a 
young Liberal, fresh from Edinburgh or Hackney 
or the hospitals, of free-will as implied in free- 
agency, he will perhaps confess with a smile that 
he is a necessitarian, — proceed to assure his hearer 



CHURCH AND STATE. 17 

that the liberty of the will is an impossible concep- 
tion, a contradiction in terms,* and finish by re- 
commending a perusal of the works of Jonathan 
Edwards or Dr. Crombie ; or as it may happen 
he may declare the will itself a mere delusion, a 
non-entity, and advise the study of Mr. Lawrence's 
Lectures. Converse on the same subject with a 
plain, single-minded, yet reflecting", neighbour, 
and he may probably say, (as St. Augustine had 
said long before him, in reply to the question, 
What is time ?) " I know it well enough when 
you do not ask me." But alike with both the 
supposed parties, the self-complacent student, just 
as certainly as with our less positive neighbour; 
if we attend to their actions, their feelings, and 
even to their words, we shall be in ill luck, if ten 
minutes pass without having full and satisfactory 
proof that the idea of man's moral freedom pos- 
sesses and modifies their whole practical being, in 
all they say, in all they feel, in all they do and are 
done to ; even as the spirit of life, which is con- 
tained in no vessel, because it permeates all. 
Just so is it with the Constitution. f Ask any 



* In fact, this is one of the distinguishing characters of 
ideas, and marks at once the difference between an idea (a 
truth-power of the reason) and a conception of the under- 
standing ; namely, that the former, as expressed in words, 
s always, and necessarily, a contradiction in terms. — See 
tids to Beflection. 3rd edit. p. 206.— Ed. 

t I do not say, with the idea : for the constitution itself 
is an idea. This will sound like a paradox or a sneer to 
C 



18 CONSTITUTION OF 

of our politicians what is meant by the Constitution, 
and it is ten to one that he will give a false expla- 
nation ; as for example, that it is the body of our 
laws, or that it is the Bill of Rights ; or perhaps, 
if he have read Thomas Payne, he may say that 
we do not yet possess one ; and yet not an hour may 
have elapsed, since we heard the same individual 
denouncing, and possibly with good reason, this or 
that code of laws, the excise and revenue laws, 
or those for including pheasants, or those for ex- 
cluding Roman Catholics, as altogether unconsti- 
tutional ; and such and such acts of Parliament as 
gross outrages on the Constitution. Mr. Peel, 
who is rather remarkable for, groundless and un- 
lucky concessions, owned that the late Act broke 
in on the Constitution of 1688 : whilst in 1689 a very 
imposing minority of the then House of Lords, 
with a decisive majority in the Lower House of 
Convocation, denounced this very Constitution of 
1688, as breaking in on the English Constitution. 
But a Constitution is an idea arising out of the 
idea of a State ; and because our whole history 
from Alfred onwards demonstrates the continued 
influence of such an idea, or ultimate aim, on 
the minds of our fore-fathers, in their characters 
and functions as public men, alike in what they 



those with whom an idea is but another word for a fancy, 
a something unreal ; but not to those who in the ideas con- 
template the most real of all realities, and of all operative 
powers the most actual. 



CHURCH AND STATE. 19 

resisted and in what they claimed ; in the institu- 
tions and forms of polity which they established, 
and with regard to those, against which they more 
or less successfully contended ; and because the 
result has been a progressive, though not always 
a director equable, advance in the gradual realiza- 
tion of the idea ; and because it is actually, though 
even because it is an idea not adequately, repre- 
sented in a correspondent scheme of means really 
existing; we speak, and have a right to speak, of 
the idea itself, as actually existing, that is, as a 
principle existing in the only way in which a 
principle can exist, — in the minds and consciences 
of the persons whose duties it prescribes, and 
whose rights it determines. In the same sense 
that the sciences of arithmetic and of geometry, 
that mind, that life itself, have reality ; the Con- 
stitution has real existence, and does not the less 
exist in reality, because it both is, and exists as, 
an idea. 

There is yet another ground for the affirmation 
of its reality ; that, as the fundamental idea, it is 
at the same time the final criterion by which all 
particular frames of government must be tried : 
for here only can we find the great constructive 
principles of our representative system — (I use the 
term in its widest sense, in which the crown itself 
is included as representing the unity of the people, 
the true and primary sense of the word majesty) ; 

-those principles, I say, in the light of which it 
can alone be ascertained what are excrescences, 



20 CONSTITUTION OF 

symptoms of distemperature, and marks of degene- 
ration ; and what are native growths, or changes 
naturally attendant on the progressive develop- 
ment of the original germ, symptoms of immatu- 
rity perhaps, but not of disease ; or at worst, mo- 
difications of the growth by the defective or faulty, 
but remediless, or only gradually remediable, qual- 
ities of the soil and surrounding elements. 

There are two other characters, distinguishing 
the class of substantive truths, or truth-powers 
here spoken of, that will, I trust, indemnify the 
reader for the delay of the two or three short sen- 
tences required for their explanation. The first 
is, that in distinction from the conception of a 
thing, — which being abstracted or generalized 
from one or more particular states, or modes, is 
necessarily posterior in order of thought to the 
thing thus conceived, — an idea, on the contrary, 
is in order of thought always and of necessity con- 
templated as antecedent. In the idea or principle, 
life, for instance, the vital functions are the result 
of the organization ; but this organization supposes 
and pre-supposes the vital principle. The bearings 
of the planets on the sun are determined by the 
ponderable matter of which they consist ; but the 
principle of gravity, the law in the material crea- 
tion, the idea of the Creator, is pre-supposed in 
order to the existence, yea, to the very conception 
of the existence, of matter itself. 

This is the first. The other distinctive mark 
may be most conveniently given in the form of a 



CHURCH AND STATE. 21 

caution. We should be made aware, namely, that 
the particular form, construction, or model, that 
may be best fitted to render the idea intelligible, 
and most effectually serve the purpose of an in 
structive diagram, is not necessarily the mode or 
form in which it actually arrives at realization. 
In the works both of man and of nature — in the 
one by the imperfection of the means and mate- 
rials, in the other by the multitude and complexity 
of simultaneous purposes — the fact is most often 
otherwise. A naturalist, (in the infancy of physio- 
logy, we will suppose, and before the first attempts 
at comparative anatomy,) — whose knowledge had 
heen confined exclusively to the human frame, or 
to that of animals similarly organized, and who by 
this experience had been led inductively to the idea 
of respiration, as the copula and mediator of the 
vascular and the nervous systems, — might, very pro- 
bably, have regarded the lungs, with their appur- 
tenances, as the only form in which this idea, or 
ultimate aim, was realizable. Ignorant of the 
functions of the spiracula in insects, and of the 
gills of fish, he would, perhaps, with great confi- 
dence degrade both to the class of non-respirants. 
But alike in the works of nature and the institu- 
tions of man, there is no more effectual preserva- 
tive against pedantry and the positiveness of scio- 
lism, than to meditate on the law of compensation 
and the principle of compromise ; and to be fully 
impressed with the wide extent of the one, the 
necessity of the other, and the frequent occur- 
rence of both. 



22 CONSTITUTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 

Having (more than sufficiently, I fear,) exercised 
my reader's patience with these preparatory re- 
marks, for which the anxiety to be fully understood 
is my best excuse, though in a moment of less ex- 
citement they might not have been without some 
claim to attention for their own sake, I return to 
the idea which forms the present subject, the 
English Constitution, which an old writer calls, 
" lex sacra, mater legum, than which nothing 
can be proposed more certain in its grounds, more 
pregnant in its consequences, or that hath more 
harmonical reason within itself: and which is so 
connatural and essential to the genius and innate 
disposition of this nation, it being formed (silk- 
worm-like) as that no other law can possibly regu- 
late it; a law not to be derived from Alured, or 
Alfred, or Canute, or other elder or later promul- 
gators of particular laws, but which might say of 
itself, — When reason and the laws of God first 
came, then came 1 with them/' 

As according to an old saying, ' an ill foreknown 
is half disarmed/ I will here notice an inconveni- 
ence in our language, which, without a greater 
inconvenience, I could not avoid, in the use of the 
term ' State' in a double sense ; a larger, in which 
it is equivalent to realm and includes the Church, 
and a narrower, fn which it is distinguished quasi 
per antithesin from the Church, as in the phrase, 
Church and State. But the context, I trust, will 
in every instance prevent ambiguity. 



IDEA OF A STATE. 23 



CHAPTER II. 

The Idea of a State in the larger sense of the 
term, introductory to the constitution of the 
State in the narrower sense, as it exists in 
this country. 

A Constitution is the attribute of a State, that 
is, of a body politic having the principle of its 
unity within itself, whether by concentration of its 
forces, as a constitutional pure monarchy, which, 
however, has hitherto continued to be ens ratio- 
nale, unknown in history ;* or, with which we are 
alone concerned, by equipoise andinterdependency ; 
— the lex equilibrii, the principle prescribing the 
means and conditions by and under which this ba- 
lance is to be established and preserved, being the 
constitution of the State. It is the chief of many 
biessino's derived from the insular character and 
circumstances of our county, that our social insti- 
tutions have formed themselves out of our proper 
needs and interests ; that long and fierce as the 
birth-struggle and the growing pains have been, the 
antagonist powers have been of our own system, 

* Spinozae Tract. Pol. cap. vi. De Monarchia ex rationis 
pr&scripto. 



24 IDEA OF 

and have been allowed to work out their final ba- 
lance with less disturbance from external forces, 
than was possible in the continental states. 

Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile, 

O Albion ! O my mother Isle ! 

Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers, 

Glitter green with sunny showers ; 

Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells 

Echo to the bleat of flocks ; 

(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells, 

Proudly ramparted with rocks ; ) 

And Ocean mid his uproar wild 

Speaks safety to his Island-child ! 

Hence for many a fearless age 

Has social freedom loved the quiet shore, 

Nor ever proud invader's rage 

Or sack'd thy towers, or stain'd thy fields with gore.* 

Now, in every country of civilized men, acknow- 
ledging the rights of property, and by means of 
determined boundaries and common laws united 
into one people or nation, the two antagonist 
powers or opposite interests of the State, under 
which all other state interests are comprised, are 
those of permanence and of progression. f 



* Ode to the Departing Year. Poet. Works, vol. i. p. 
126.— Ed. 

t Let me call attention to the essential difference between 
' opposite' and ' contrary.' Opposite powers are always of 
the same kind, and tend to union, either by equipoise or by 
a common product. Thus the + and — poles of the mag- 
net, thus positive and negative electricity, are opposites. 
Sweet and sour are opposites ; sweet and bitter are contra- 



A STATE. 25 

It will not be necessary to enumerate the several 
causes that combine to connect the permanence of 
a state with the land and the landed property. 
To found a family, and to convert his wealth into 
land, are twin thoughts, births of the same mo- 
ment, in the mind of the opulent merchant, when 
he thinks of reposing from his labours. From the 
class of the novi homines he redeems himself by 
becoming' the staple ring" of the chain, by which the 
present will become connected with the past, and 



ries. The feminine character is opposed to the masculine ; 
but the effeminate is its contrary. Even so in the present 
instance, the interest of permanence is opposed to that of 
prog-res siven ess ; but so far from being contrary interests, 
they, like the magnetic forces, suppose and require each 
other. Even the most mobile of creatures, the serpent, 
makes a rest of its own body, and, drawing up its volumi- 
nous train from behind, on this fulcrum propels itself on- 
ward. On the other hand, it is a proverb in all languages, 
that (relatively to man at least) what would stand still must 
in fact be retrograde. 

Many years ago, in conversing with a friend, I expressed 
my belief that in no instance had the false use of a word 
become current without some practical ill consequence, of 
far greater moment than would prime- aspectu have been 
thought possible. That friend, very lately referring to this 
remark, assured me that not a month had passed since then, 
without some instance in proof of its truth having occurred 
in his own experience ; and added, with a smile, that he 
had more than once amused himself with the thought of a 
verbarian Attorney- General, authorized to bring informa- 
tions ex officio against the writer or editor of any work in 
extensive circulation, who, after due notice issued, should 
persevere in misusing a word. 



26 IDEA OF 

the test and evidence of permanency be afforded. 
To the same principle appertain primogeniture 
and hereditary titles, and the influence which 
these exert in accumulating large masses of pro- 
perty, and in counteracting the antagonist and 
dispersive forces, which the follies, the vices, and 
misfortunes of individuals can scarcely fail to sup- 
ply. To this, likewise, tends the proverbial ob- 
duracy of prejudices characteristic of the humbler 
tillers of the soil, and their aversion even to benefits 
that are offered in the form of innovations. But 
why need I attempt to explain a fact which no 
thinking man will deny, and where the admission 
of the fact is all that my argument requires ? 

On the other hand, with as little chance of con- 
tradiction, I may assert that the progression of a 
State in the arts and comforts of life, in the diffu- 
sion of the information and knowledge, useful or 
necessary for all ; in short, all advances in civili- 
zation, and the rights and privileges of citizens, 
are especially connected with, and derived from, 
the four classes, the mercantile, the manufacturing, 
the distributive, and the professional. To early 
Rome, war and conquest were the substitutes for 
trade and commerce. War was their trade.* As 



* " War in republican Rome was the offspring of its in- 
tense aristocracy of spirit, and stood to the state in lieu of 
trade. As long as there was any thing ab extra to conquer, 
the state advanced : when nothing remained but what, was 
Roman, then, as a matter of course, civil war began. "* — Ta- 
ble Talk, 2nd edit. 169.— Ed. 



A STATE. 27 

these wars became more frequent, on a larger 
scale, and with fewer interruptions, the liberties of 
the plebeians continued increasing : for even the 
sugar plantations of Jamaica would (in their pre- 
sent state, at least), present a softened picture of 
the hard and servile relation, in which the plebeians 
at one time stood to their patrician superiors. 

Italy is supposed at present to maintain a larger 
number of inhabitants than in the days of Trajan 
or in the best and most prosperous of the Roman 
empire. With the single exception of the Eccle- 
siastical State, the whole country is cultivated like 
a garden. You may find there every gift of God 
— only not freedom. It is a country rich in the 
proudest recoids of liberty, illustrious with the 
names of heroes, statesmen, legislators, philoso- 
phers. It hath a history all alive with the virtues 
and crimes of hostile parties, when the glories and 
the struggles of ancient Greece were acted over 
again in the proud republics Gf Venice, Genoa, 
and Florence. The life of every eminent citizen 
was in constant hazard from the furious factions 
of his native city, and yet life had no charm out of 
its dear and honored walls. All the splendors of 
the hospitable palace, and the favor of princes, could 
not soothe the pining of Dante or Machiavel, 
exiles from their free, their beautiful Florence. 
But scarcely a pulse of true liberty survives. It 
was the profound policy of the Spanish and 
Austrian courts to degrade by every possible means 
the profession of trade ; and even in Pisa and 



28 IDEA OF 

Florence themselves to introduce the feudal pride 
and prejudice of less happy, less enlightened, coun- 
tries. Agriculture, meanwhile, with its attendant 
population and plenty, was cultivated with increa- 
sing success ; but from the Alps to the Straits of 
Messina the Italians became slaves. 

I have thus divided the subjects of the State 
into two orders, the agricultural or possessors of 
land ; and the mercantile, manufacturing, dis- 
tributive, and professional bodies, under the com- 
mon name of citizens. And I have now to add 
that by the nature of things common to every 
civilized country, at all events by the course of 
events in this country, the first order is subdivided 
into two classes, which, in imitation of our old 
law books, we may call the Major and Minor 
Barons; both these, either by their interests or by 
the very effect of their situation, circumstances, 
and the nature of their employment, vitally con- 
nected with the permanency of the State, its in- 
stitutions, rights, customs, manners, privileges, 
and as such, opposed to the second order, the 
inhabitants of ports, towns, and cities, who are in 
like manner and from like causes more especially 
connected with its progression. I scarcely need 
say, that in a very advanced stage of civilization, 
the two orders of society will more and more 
modify and leaven each other, yet never so com- 
pletely but that the distinct character will remain 
legible, and to use the words of the Roman Em- 
peror, even in w 7 hat is struck out the erasure will 



A STATE. 29 

be manifest. At all times the Franklins, or the 
lower of the two ranks of which the first order 
consists, will, in their political sympathies, draw 
more nearly to the antagonist order than the first 
rank. On these facts, which must at all times 
have existed, though in very different degrees 
of prominence or maturity, the principle of our 
Constitution was established. The total interests 
of the country, the interests of the State, were 
entrusted to a great Council or Parliament, com- 
posed of two Houses. The first consisted exclu- 
sively of the Major Barons, who at once stood as 
the guardians and sentinels of their several estates 
and privileges, and the representatives of the com- 
mon weal. The Minor Barons, or Franklins, too 
numerous, and indeed individually too weak, to 
sit and maintain their rights in person, were to 
choose among the worthiest of their own body 
representatives, and these in such number as to 
form an important though minor proportion of a 
second House, the majority of which was formed 
by the representatives of the second order chosen 
by the cities, ports, and boroughs ; which repre- 
sentatives ought on principle to have been elected 
not only by, but from among, the members of the 
manufacturing, mercantile, distributive, and pro- 
fessional classes. 

These four last mentioned classes, by an arbi- 
trary but convenient use of the phrase, I will 
designate by the name of the Personal Interest, 
as the exponent of all moveable and personal 



30 IDEA OF 

possessions, including skill and acquired know- 
ledge, the moral and intellectual stock in trade of 
the professional man and the artist, no less than 
the raw materials, and the means of elaborating, 
transporting, and distributing them. 

Thus in the theory of the Constitution it was pro- 
vided that even though both divisions of the 
Landed Interest should combine in any legislative 
attempt to encroach on the rights and privileges 
of the Personal Interest, yet the representatives 
of the latter forming the clear and effectual ma- 
jority of the lower House, the attempt must be 
abortive ; the majority of votes in both Houses 
being indispensable in order to the presentation of 
a bill for the completory act, — that is, to make it 
a law of the land. By force of the same me- 
chanism must every attack be baffled that should 
be made by the representatives of the minor land- 
holders, in concert with the burgesses, on the ex- 
isting rights and privileges of the peerage , and of 
the hereditary aristocracy, of which the peerage 
is the summit and the natural protector. Lastly, 
should the nobles join to invade the rights and 
franchises of the Franklins and the Yeomanry, 
the sympathy of interest, by which the inhabitants 
of cities, towns, and sea-ports are linked to the 
great body of their agricultural fellow T -commoners, 
who supply their markets and form their principal 
customers, could not fail to secure a united and 
successful resistance. Nor would this affinity of 
interest find a slight support in the sympathy of 



A STATE. 31 

feeling- between the burgess senators and the county 
representatives, as members of the same House ; 
and in the consciousness which the former have of 
the dignity conferred on them by the latter. For 
the notion of superior dignity will always be at- 
tached in the minds of men to that kind of property 
with which they have most associated the idea of 
permanence : and the land is the synonyme of 
country. 

That the burgesses were not bound to elect repre- 
sentatives from among their own order, individuals 
bona fide belonging* to one or other of the four 
divisions above enumerated ; that the elective fran- 
chise of the cities, towns, and ports, first invested 
with borough-rights, was not made conditional, 
and to a certain extent at least dependent, on 
their retaining the same comparative wealth and 
independence, and rendered subject to a periodical 
revisal and re-adjustment ; that, in consequence 
of these and other causes, the very weights in- 
tended for the effectual counterpoise of the great 
land- holders, have, in the course of events, been 
shifted into the opposite scale ; that they now 
constitute a large proportion of the political power 
and influence of the very class of men whose 
personal cupidity and whose partial views of the 
Landed Interest at large they were meant to keep 
in check ; — these things are no part of the Con- 
stitution, no essential ingredients in the idea, but 
apparent defects and imperfections in its reali- 
zation ; which, however, we need neither regret 



32 IDEA OF 

nor set about amending, till we have seen whether 
an equivalent force has not arisen to supply the 
deficiency ; — a force great enough to have de- 
stroyed the equilibrium, had not such a transfer 
taken place previously to, or at the same time with, 
the operation of the new forces. Roads, canals, 
machinery, the press, the periodical and daily 
press, the might of public opinion, the consequent 
increasing desire of popularity among public men 
and functionaries of every description, and the 
increasing necessity of public character, as the 
means or condition of political influence ; — I need 
but mention these to stand acquitted of having 
started a vague and naked possibility in extenuation 
of an evident and palpable abuse. 

But whether this conjecture be well or ill 
grounded, the principle of the Constitution remains 
the same. That harmonious balance of the two 
great correspondent, at once supporting and 
counterpoising, interests of the State, its perma- 
nence, and its progression ; that balance of the 
Landed and the Personal Interests was to be secured 
by a legislature of two Houses ; the first consisting 
wholly of barons or landholders, permanent and 
hereditary senators ; the second of the knights or 
minor barons, elected by, and as the representatives 
of, the remaining landed community, together with 
the burgesses, the representatives of the commer- 
cial, manufacturing, distributive, and professional 
classes, — the latter (the elected burgesses) consti- 
tuting the major number. The King, meanwhile, 



A St ATE. 33 

in whom the executive power is vested, it will suf- 
fice at present to consider as the beam of the con- 
stitutional scales. A more comprehensive view of 
the kingly office must be deferred, till the remain- 
ing problem (the idea of a national Church) has been 
solved. 

I here again entreat the reader to bear in mind 
what I have before endeavoured to impress on him, 
that I am not giving an historical account of the 
legislative body ; nor can I be supposed to assert 
that such was the earliest mode or form in which 
the national council was constructed. My asser- 
tion is simply this, that its formation has advanced 
in this direction. The line of evolution, however 
sinuous, has still tended to this point, sometimes 
with, sometimes without, not seldom, perhaps, 
against, the intention of the individual actors, but 
always as if a power, greater and better than the 
men themselves, had intended it for them. Nor 
let it be forgotten that every new grow T th, every 
power and privilege, bought 'or extorted, has uni- 
formly been claimed by an antecedent right ; not 
acknowledged as a boon conferred, but both de- 
manded and received as what had always belonged 
to them, though withholden by violence and the in- 
jury of the times : and this too, in cases, where, 
if documents and historical records, or even consis- 
tent traditions, had been required in evidence, the 
monarch w T ould have had the better of the argument. 
But, in truth, it was no more than a practical way 
of saying : " this or that is contained in the idea of 

D 



34 IDEA OF 

our government, and it is a consequence of the 
lex, mater legum, which, in the very first law of 
state ever promulgated in the land, was pre-sup- 
posed as the ground of that first law." 

Before I conclude this part of my subject, I must 
press on the reader's attention, that the preceding 
is offered only as the constitutional idea of the State. 
In order to correct views respecting the constitu- 
tion, in the more enlarged sense of the term, namely, 
the constitution of the nation, we must, in addi- 
tion to a grounded knowledge of the State, have the 
right idea of the national Church. These are two 
poles of the same magnet ; the magnet itself, 
which is constituted by them, is the constitution 
of the nation. 



CHAPTER III. 
On the National Church. 

The reading of histories may dispose a man to 
satire ; but the science of history, history studied 
in the light of philosophy, as the great drama of 
an ever unfolding Providence, has a very dfferent 
effect. It infuses hope and reverential thoughts of 
man and his destination. It will, therefore, I trust, 
be no unwelcome result, if it should be made appear 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 35 

that something" deeper and better than priestcraft 
and priest-ridden ignorance was at the bottom of 
the phrase, Church and State, and entitled it to be 
the form in which so many thousands of the men 
of England clothed the wish for their country's weal. 
But many things have conspired to draw off atten- 
tion from its true origin and import, and have lead 
us to seek the reasons for thus connecting the two 
words in facts and motives that lie nearer the sur- 
face. I will mention one only, because, though 
less obvious than many other causes that have 
favoured the general misconception on this point, 
and though its action is indirect and negative, it 
is by no means the least operative. The imme- 
diate effect, indeed, may be confined to the men of 
education. But what influences these will finally 
influence all. I am referring to the noticeable fact 
arising out of the system of instruction pursued in 
all our classical schools and universities, that the 
annals of ancient Greece, and of republican and 
imperial Rome, though they are, in truth, but bril- 
liant exceptions from history generally, do yet, partly 
from the depth and intensity of all early impressions, 
and in part from the number and splendour of in- 
dividual characters and particular events and ex- 
ploits, so fill the imagination as almost to be, — 
during the period when the groundwork of our 
minds is principally formed, and the direction given 
to our modes of thinking*, — what we mean by 
history. Hence things, of which no instance or 
analogy is recollected in the customs, policy, and 



36 # IDEA OF 

jurisprudence of Greece and Rome, lay little hold 
on our attention. Among these, I know not one 
more worthy of notice than the principle of the 
division of property, which, if not, as I however 
think, universal in the earliest ages, was, at all 
events, common to the Scandinavian, Keltic, and 
Gothic tribes with the Semitic, or the tribes de- 
scended from Shem. 

It is not the least among the obligations which 
the antiquarian and the philosophic statist owe to 
a tribe of the last-mentioned race, the Hebrew, 
that in the institutes of their great legislator, 
who first formed them into a state or nation, they 
have preserved for us a practical illustration of the 
principle in question, which was by no means pe- 
culiar to the Hebrew people, though in their case 
it received a peculiar sanction. 

To confound the inspiring spirit with the inform- 
ing word, and both with the dictation of sentences 
and formal propositions ; and to confine the office 
and purpose of inspiration to the miraculous immis- 
sion or infusion of novelties, res nusquam prius 
visce vel audita, — these, alas ! are the current errors 
of Protestants without learning, and of bigots in 
spite of it ; but which I should have left unnoticed, 
but for the injurious influence which certain notions 
in close connexion with these errors have had on 
the present subject. The notion, I mean, that the 
Levitical institution was not only enacted by an 
inspired law-giver, not only a work of revealed 
wisdom, (which who denies ?) but that it was a part 
of revealed religion, having its origin in this par- 



THE-NATIO^AL CHURCH. 3d 

ticular revelation, as a something which could nor 
have existed otherwise ; yet, on the other hand, a 
part of the religion that had been abolished by 
Christianity. Had these reasoners contented them- 
selves with asserting that it did not belong to the 
Christian religion, they would have said nothing* 
more than the truth ; and for this plain reason, 
that it forms no part of religion at all in the 
Gospel sense of the word, — that is, religion as 
contra-distinguished from law ; the spiritual as 
contra-distinguished from the temporal or political. 
In answer to all these notions, it is enough to 
say that not the principle itself, but the superior 
wisdom with which the principle was carried into 
effect, the greater perfection of the machinery, 
forms the true distinction, the peculiar worth, of 
the Hebrew constitution. The principle itself was 
common to Goth and Kelt, or rather, I would say, 
to all the tribes that had not fallen off to either of 
the two aphelia, or extreme distances from the 
generic character of man, the wild or the bar- 
barous state ; but who remained either constituent 
parts or appendages of the stirps generosa seu 
historica, as a philosophic friend has named that 
portion of the Semitic and Japetic races which had 
not degenerated below the conditions of pro- 
gressive civilization: — it was, I say, common to all 
the primitive races, that in taking possession of a 
new country, and in the division of the land into 
heritable estates among the individual warriors or 
heads of families, a reserve should be made for the 
nation itself. 



33 IDEA OF 

The sum total of these heritable portions, ap- 
propriated each to an individual lineage, I take 
leave to name the Propriety ; and to call the reserve 
above-mentioned the Nationalty ; and likewise to 
employ the term wealth in that primary and wide 
sense which it retains in the term, commonwealth. 
In the establishment, then, of the landed pro- 
prieties, a nationalty was at the same time consti- 
tuted ; as a wealth not consisting of lands, but yet 
derivative from the land, and rightfully inseparable 
from the same. These, the Propriety and the Na- 
tionalty, were the two constituent factors, the op- 
posite, but correspondent and reciprocally sup- 
porting, counterweights of the commonwealth; 
the existence of the one being the condition and 
the perfecting of the rightfulness of the other. 
Now as all polar forces, — that is, opposite, not con- 
trary, powers, — are necessarily unius generis, ho- 
mogeneous, so in the present instance each is 
that which it is called, relatively, by predominance 
of the one character or quality, not by the absolute 
exclusion of the other. The wealth appropriated 
was not so entirely a property as not to remain, to 
a certain extent, national ; nor was the wealth re- 
served so exclusively national as not to admit of 
individual tenure. It was only necessary that the 
mode and origin of the tenure should be different, 
and, as it were, in antithesis If the one be he- 
reditary, the other must be elective ; if the one 
be lineal, the other must be circulative. 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 39 



CHAPTER IV. 

Illustration of the preceding Chapter from his- 
tory, and principally from that of the Hebrew 
Commonwealth. 

In the unfolding 1 and exposition of any idea we 
naturally seek assistance and the means of illus- 
tration from the historical instance, in which it has 
been most nearly realized, or of which we possess 
the most exact and satisfactory records. Both of 
these recommendations are found in the formation 
of the Hebrew Commonwealth. But in availing 
ourselves of examples from history there is always 
danger lest that which was to assist us in at- 
taining a clear insight into truth should be the 
means of disturbing or falsifying it, so that we at- 
tribute to the object what was but the effect of 
flaws or other accidents in the glass, through 
which w r e looked at it. To secure ourselves from 
this danger, we must constantly bear in mind that 
in the actual realization of every great idea or 
principle there will always exist disturbing forces, 
modifying the product, either from the imperfec- 
tion of the agents, or from especial circumstances 
overruling them ; or from the defect of the ma- 
terials ; or lastly, and which most particularly ap- 



40 IDEA OF 

plies to the instances I have here in view, from 
the co-existence of some yet greater idea, some 
yet more important purpose, with which the former 
must be combined, but likewise subordinated. 
Nevertheless, these are no essentials of the idea, 
no exemplary parts in the particular construction 
adduced for its illustration. On the contrary, they 
are deviations from the idea, which we must ab- 
stract and put aside before we can make a safe 
and fearless use of the example. 

Such, for instance, was the settlement of the 
nationalty in one tribe, which, to the exclusion of 
the other eleven divisions of the Hebrew confe- 
deracy, was to be invested with its rights, and to 
be alone capable of discharging its duties. This 
was, indeed, in some measure, corrected by the 
institution of the Nabim, or Prophets, who might 
be of any tribe, and who formed a numerous body, 
uniting the functions and three-fold character of 
the Roman Censors, the Tribunes of the people, 
and the sacred college of Augurs ; protectors of 
the nation and privileged state-moralists, whom 
Milton has already compared to the orators of the 
Greek democracies.* Still the most satisfactory 

* The lines which our sage and learned poet puts in the 
Saviour's mouth, both from their truth and from their appo- 
siteness to the present subject, well deserve to be quoted : — 

" Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those 
The top of eloquence : — Statists indeed 
And lovers of their country as may seem ; 
But herein to our prophets far beneath, 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 41 

justification of this exclusive policy is to be found, 
I think, in the fact, that the Jewish theocracy 
itself was but a mean to a further and greater end; 
and that the effects of the policy were subordinated 
to an interest far more momentous than that of 
any single kingdom or commonwealth could be. 
The unfitness and insufficiency of the Jewish cha- 
racter for the reception and execution of the great 
legislator's scheme were not less important parts 
of the sublime purpose of Providence, in the sepa- 
ration of the chosen people, than their characte- 
ristic virtues. Their frequent relapses, and the 
never-failing return of a certain number to the na- 
tional faith and customs, were alike subservient to 
the ultimate object, the final cause, of the Mosaic 
dispensation. Without pain or reluctance, there- 
fore, I should state this provision, by which a par- 
ticular lineage was made a necessary qualification 
for the trustees and functionaries of the reserved 
national ty, as the main cause of the comparatively 
little effect, which the Levitical establishment pro- 
duced on the moral and intellectual character of 
the Jewish people during the whole period of their 
existence as an independent state. 

As men divinely taught and better teaching- 

The solid rules of civil government, 

In their majestic, unaffected style, 

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. 

In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt 

What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so/' 

Par. Reg. B. iv. 



42 IDEA OF 

With this exception, however, the scheme of the 
Hebrew polity may be profitably used as the diagram 
or illustrative model of a principle which actuated 
the primitive races generally under similar circum- 
stances. With this and one other exception, 
likewise arising out of the peculiar purpose of 
Providence, namely, the discouragement of trade 
and commerce in the Hebrew policy, — a principle 
so inwoven in the whole fabric, that the revolution 
in this respect effected by Solomon had, perhaps, 
no small share in the quickly succeeding disso- 
lution of the confederacy, — it may be profitably 
considered even under existing circumstances. 

And first let me observe that with the Keltic, 
Gothic, and Scandinavian, equally as with the 
Hebrew, tribes property by absolute right existed 
only in a tolerated alien ; and that there was 
everywhere a prejudice against the occupation ex- 
pressly directed to its acquirement, namely, the 
trafficking with the current representatives of wealth. 
Even in that species of possession, in which the 
right of the individual was the prominent relative 
character, the institution of the Jubilee provided 
against its degenerating into the merely personal ; 
reclaimed it for the State, that is, for the line, the 
heritage, as one of the permanent units or integral 
parts, the aggregate of which constitutes the State, 
in that narrower and especial sense in which it has 
been distinguished from the nation. And to these 
permanent units the calculating and governing 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 43 

mind of the State directs its attention, even as it is 
the depths, breadths, bays, and windings or reaches 
of a river that are the subject of the hydrographer, 
not the water-drops that at any one moment con- 
stitute the stream. And on this point the greatest 
stress should be laid ; this should be deeply im- 
pressed, and carefully borne in mind, that the 
abiding interests, the estates, and ostensible tangible 
properties, not the persons as persons, are the 
proper subjects of the State in this sense, or of the 
power of the parliament or supreme council, as the 
representatives and plenipotentiaries of the State, 
that is, of the Propriety, and in distinction from the 
commonwealth, in which 1 comprise both the Pro- 
priety and the Nationalty. 

And here let me further remark that the records 
of the Hebrew polity are rendered far less instruc- 
tive as lessons of political wisdom by the disposition 
to regard the Jehovah in that universal and spiritual 
acceptation, in which we use the word as Chris- 
tians. For relatively to the Jewish polity the 
Jehovah was their covenanted king : and if we 
draw any inference from the former or Christian 
sense of the term, it should be this;— that God is 
the unity of every nation ; that the convictions and 
the will, which are one, the same, and simulta- 
neously acting in a multitude of individual agents, 
are not the birth of any individual ; that when the 
people speak loudly and unanimously, it is from 
their being strongly impressed by the godhead or 



44 IDEA OF 

the demon. Only exclude the (by no means ex- 
travagant) supposition of a demoniac possession, 
and then vox populi vox Dei.* So thought Sir 
Philip Sidney, who in the great revolution of the 
Netherlands considered the universal and simulta- 
neous adoption of the same principles as a proof 
of the divine presence ; and on that belief, and on- 
that alone, grounded his assurance of its successful 
result. And that I may apply this to the present 
subject, it was in the character of the king, as the 
majesty or symbolic unity of the whole nation, 
both of the State and of the persons ; it was in the 
name of the king, in whom both the Propriety and 
the Nationalty ideally centered, and from whom, 
as from a fountain, they are ideally supposed to 
flow ; it was in the name of the king, that the pro- 
clamation throughout the land, by sound of trumpet, 
was made to all possessors : The land is not yours, 
saith the Lord, the land is mine. To you I lent 
it. The voice of the trumpets is not, indeed, heard 
in this country. But no less intelligibly is it 
declared by the spirit and history of our laws that 
the possession of a property, not connected with 



* " I never said that the vox populi was of course the vox 
Dei. It may be ; but it may be, and with equal probability 
a priori, vox Diaboli. That the voice of ten millions of men 
calling- for the same thing is a spirit, 1 believe ; but whether 
that be a spirit of Heaven or Hell, I can only know by trying 
the thing called for by the prescript of reason and God's 
win." Table Talk, 2nd edit. p. 163.— Ed. 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 45 

especial duties, a property not fiduciary or official, 
but arbitrary and unconditional, was in the sight 
of our forefathers the brand of a Jew and an alien ; 
not the distinction, nor the right, nor the honour, 
of an English baron or gentleman. 



CHAPTER V. 

Of the Church of England, or National Clergy, 
according to the Constitution; its characteristic 
ends, purposes and functions ; and of the per- 
sons comprehended under the Clergy, or the 
functionaries of the National Church. 

After these introductory preparations, I can have 
no difficulty in setting forth the right idea of a 
national Church as in the language of Queen 
Elizabeth the third great venerable estate of the 
realm ; the first being the estate of the land-owners 
or possessors of fixed property, consisting of the 
two classes of the Barons and the Franklins ; and 
the second comprising the merchants, the manu- 
facturers, free artizans, and the distributive class. 
To comprehend, therefore, the true character of 
this third estate, in which the reserved National ty 
was vested, we must first ascertain the end or 
national purpose, for which such reservation was 
made. 



46 IDEA OF 

Now, as in the first estate the permanency of 
the nation was provided for ; and in the second 
estate its progressiveness and personal freedom ; 
while in the king the cohesion by interdependence, 
and the unity of the country, were established ; 
there remains for the third estate only that interest 
which is the ground, the necessary antecedent 
condition, of both the former. These depend on 
a continuing and progressive civilization. But 
civilization is itself but a mixed good, if not far 
more a corrupting influence, the hectic of disease, 
not the bloom of health, and a nation so distin- 
guished more fitly to be called a varnished than a 
polished people, where this civilization is not 
grounded in cultivation, in the harmonious deve- 
lopement of those qualities and faculties that cha- 
racterize our humanity. We must be men in order 
to be citizens. 

The Nationalty, therefore, was reserved for the 
support and maintenance of a permanent class or 
order with the following duties. A certain smaller 
number were to remain at the fountain heads of 
the humanities, in cultivating and enlarging the 
knowledge already possessed, and in watching 
over the interests of physical and moral science ; 
being, likewise, the instructors of such as consti- 
tuted, or were to constitute, the remaining more 
numerous classes of the order. The members of 
this latter and far more numerous body were to be 
distributed throughout the country, so as not to 
leave even the smallest integral part or division 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 47 

without a resident guide, guardian, and instructor ; 
the objects and final intention of the whole order 
being these — to preserve the stores and to guard the 
treasures of past civilization, and thus to bind the 
present with the past ; to perfect and add to the 
same, and thus to connect the present with the 
future ; but especially to diffuse through the whole 
community and to every native entitled to its laws 
and rights that quantity and quality of knowledge 
which was indispensable both for the understanding 
of those rights, and for the performance of the duties 
correspondent : finally, to secure for the nation, if 
not a superiority over the neighbouring states, yet 
an equality at least, in that character of general 
civilization, which equally with, or rather more than, 
fleets, armies, and revenue, forms the ground of its 
defensive and offensive power. The object of the 
two former estates of the realm, which conjointly form 
the State, was to reconcile the interests of perma- 
nence with that of progression — law with liberty. 
The object of the national Church, the third re- 
maining estate of the realm, was to secure and 
improve that civilization, without w T hich the nation 
could be neither permanent nor progressive. 

That, in all ages, individuals who have directed 
their meditations and their studies to the nobler 
characters of our nature, to the cultivation of those 
powers and instincts which constitute the man, at 
least separate him from the animal, and distinguish 
the nobler from the animal part of his own being, 
will be led by the supernatural in themselves to the 



48 IDEA OF 

contemplation of a power which is likewise super- 
human ; that science, and especially moral science, 
will lead to religion, and remain blended with it, — 
this, I say, will in all ages be the course of things. 
That in the earlier ages, and in the dawn of 
civility, there will be a twilight in which science 
and religion give light, but a light refracted through 
the dense and the dark, a superstition; — this is 
what we learn from history, and what philosophy 
would have taught us to expect. But I affirm 
that in the spiritual purpose of the word, and as 
understood in reference to a future state, and to 
the abiding essential interest of the individual as a 
person, and not as the citizen, neighbour, or subject, 
religion may be an indispensable ally, but is not 
the essential constitutive end, of that national in- 
stitute, which is unfortunately, at least improperly, 
styled the Church ; a name which in its best sense 
is exclusively appropriate to the Church of Christ. 
If this latter be ecclesia, the communion of such 
as are called out of the world, that is, in reference 
to the especial ends and purposes of that commu- 
nion; this other might more expressively have 
been entitled enclesia, or an order of men chosen 
in and of the realm, and constituting an estate of 
that realm. And in fact, such was the original 
and proper sense of the more appropriately named 
clergy. It comprehended the learned of all names, 
and the clerk was the synonyme of the man of 
learning. Nor can any fact more strikingly illus- 
trate the conviction entertained by our ancestors 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 49 

respecting the intimate connexion of this clergy 
with the peace and weal of the nation, than the 
privilege formerly recognized by our laws, in the 
well-known phrase, " benefit of clergy." 

Deeply do I feel, for clearly do I see, the im- 
portance of my theme. And had I equal confi- 
dence in my ability to awaken the same interest in 
the minds of others, I should dismiss as affronting 
to rav readers all apprehension of being charged 
with prolixity, while I am labouring to compress 
in two or three brief chapters the principal sides 
and aspects of a subject so large and multilateral 
as to require a volume for its full exposition ; — 
with what success will be seen in what follows, 
commencing with the Churchmen, or (a far apter 
and less objectionable designation,) the national 
Clerisy. 

The Clerisy of the nation, or national Church, 
in its primary acceptation and original intention, 
comprehended the learned of all denominations, 
the sages and professors of the law and jurispru- 
dence, of medicine and physiology, of music, of 
military and civil architecture, of the physical 
sciences, with the mathematical as the common 
organ of the preceding ; in short, all the so called 
liberal arts and sciences, the possession and appli- 
cation of which constitute the civilization of a 
country, as well as the theological. The last was, 
indeed, placed at the head of all; and of good 
right did it claim the precedence. But why ? 
Because under the name of theology or divinity 

E 



50 IDEA OF 

were contained the interpretation of languages, 
the conservation and tradition of past events, the 
momentous epochs and revolutions of the race 
and nation, the continuation of the records, logic, 
ethics, and the determination of ethical science, in 
application to the rights and duties of men in all 
their various relations, social and civil ; and lastly, 
the ground-knowledge, the prima scientia as it 
was named, — philosophy, or the doctrine and dis- 
cipline of ideas.* 

Theology formed only a part of the objects, the 



* That is, of knowledges immediate, yet real, and herein 
distinguished in kind from logical and mathematical truths, 
which express not realities, but only the necessary forms of 
conceiving and perceiving, and are therefore named the formal 
or abstract sciences. Ideas, on the other hand, or the truths 
of philosophy, properly so called, correspond to substantial 
beings, to objects the actual subsistence of which is implied 
in their idea, though only by the idearevealable. To adopt 
the language of the great philosophic Apostle, they are spiri- 
tual realities that can only spiritually be discerned, and the in- 
herent aptitude and moral preconfiguration to which consti- 
tutes what we mean by ideas, and by the presence of ideal 
truth and of ideal power, in the human being. They, in 
fact, constitute his humanity. For try to conceive a man 
without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will, absolute 
truth, of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An 
animal endowed with a memory of appearances and of facts 
might remain. But the man will have vanished, and you 
have instead a creature, more subtle than any beast of the field ', 
but likewise cursed above every beast of the field ; upon the belly 
must it go and dust must it eat all the days of its life. But I 
recal myself from a train of thoughts little likely to find fa- 
vour in this age of sense and selfishness. 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 51 

theologians formed only a portion of the clerks 
or clergy, of the national Church. The theo- 
logical order had precedency indeed, and de- 
servedly ; but not because its members were 
priests, whose office was to conciliate the invisible 
powers, and to superintend the interests that sur- 
vive the grave ; nor as being exclusively, or even 
principally, sacerdotal or templar, which, when it 
did occur, is to be considered as an accident of the 
age, a mis-growth of ignorance and oppression, 
a falsification of the constitutive principle, not a 
constituent part of the same. No, the theologians 
took the lead, because the science of theology was 
the root and the trunk of the knowledges that 
civilized man, because it gave unity and the cir- 
culating sap of life to all other sciences, by virtue 
of which alone they could be contemplated as 
forming, collectively, the living tree of knowledge. 
It had the precedency because, under the name 
theology, were comprised all the main aids, in- 
struments, and materials of national education, 
the nisus formativus of the body politic, the 
shaping and informing spirit, which, educing or 
eliciting the latent man in all the natives of the 
soil, trains them up to be citizens of the country, 
free subjects of the realm. And lastly, because 
to divinity belong those fundamental truths, which 
are the common ground-work of our civil and our 
religious duties, not less indispensable to a right 
view of our temporal concerns, than to a rational 
faith respecting our immortal well-being. Not 



52 IDEA OF 

without celestial observations can even terrestrial 
charts be accurately constructed. And of especial 
importance is it to the objects here contemplated, 
that only by the vital warmth diffused by these 
truths throughout the many, and by the guiding- 
light from the philosophy, which is the basis of 
divinity, possessed by the few, can either the 
community or its rulers fully comprehend, or 
rightly appreciate, the permanent distinction and 
the occasional contrast between cultivation and 
civilization ; or be made to understand this most 
valuable of the lessons taught by history, and 
exemplified alike in her oldest and her most recent 
records — that a nation can never be a too cultivated, 
but may easily become an over-civilized, race. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Secessions or offsets from the National Clerisy. 
Usurpations and abuses previous to the Refor- 
mation. Henry VIII. What he might and 
should have done. The main end and final 
cause of the Nationalty ; and the duties, 
which the State may demand of the National 
Clerisy. A question, and the answer to it. 

As a natural consequence of the full developement 
and expansion of the mercantile and commercial 
order, which in the earlier epochs of the constitu- 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 53 

tion only existed, as it were, potentially and in the 
bud ; the students and possessors of those sciences, 
and those sorts of learning', the use and necessity of 
which were indeed constant and perpetual to the 
nation, but only accidental and occasional to indi- 
viduals, gradually detached themselves from the 
Nationalty and the national clergy, and passed to 
the order, with the growth and thriving condition 
of which their emoluments were found to increase 
in equal proportion. Rather, perhaps, it should 
be said that under the common name of profes- 
sional, the learned in the departments of law, 
medicine, and the like, formed an intermediate 
link between the established clergy and the bur- 



This circumstance, however, can in no way 
affect the principle, nor alter the tenure, nor annul 
the rights, of those who remained, and who, as 
members of the permanent learned class, were 
planted throughout the realm, each in his ap- 
pointed place, as the immediate agents and in- 
struments in the great and indispensable work of 
perpetuating, promoting, and increasing the civi- 
lization of the nation, and who thus fulfilling the 
purposes for which the determinate portion of the 
total wealth from the land had been reserved, are 
entitled to remain its trustees and usufructuary 
proprietors. But I do not assert that the proceeds 
from the Nationalty cannot be rightfully vested, 
except in what we now mean by clergymen and 
the established clero-v. I have every where im- 



54 IDEA OF 

plied the contrary. But I do assert, that the Na- 
tionalty cannot rightfully, and that without foul 
wrong- to the nation it never has been, alienated 
from its original purposes. I assert that those 
who, being duly elected and appointed thereto, 
exercise the functions, and perform the duties, 
attached to the Nationalty possess collectively an 
inalienable, indefeasible, title to the same ; and 
this by 2ijus divinum, to which the thunders from 
Mount Sinai might give additional authority, but 
not additional evidence. 

Corollary. — During the dark times, when 
the incubus of superstition lay heavy across the 
breast of the living and the dying ; and when all 
the familiar tricksy spirits in the service of an 
alien, self-expatriated and anti-national priesthood 
were at work in all forms and in all directions to 
aggrandize and enrich a kingdom of this world ; 
large masses were alienated from the heritable pro- 
prieties of the realm, and confounded with the 
Nationalty under the common name of Church 
property. Had every rood, every pepper-corn, 
every stone, brick, and beam been re-transferred 
and made heritable at the Reformation, no fight 
would have been invaded, no principle of justice 
violated. What the State by law — that is, by the 
collective will of its functionaries at any one time 
assembled — can do or suffer to be done ; that the 
State by law can undo or inhibit. And in prin- 
ciple, such bequests and donations were vicious ah 
initio y implying in the donor an absolute property 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 55 

in land, unknown to the constitution of the realm, 
and in defeasance of that immutable reason which, 
in the name of the nation and the national majesty, 
proclaims : — " The land is not yours ; it was vested 
in your lineage in trust for the nation/' And 
though, in change of times and circumstances, 
the interest of progression, with the means and 
motives for the same — hope, industry, enterprise 
— may render it the wisdom of the State to facili- 
tate the transfer from line to line, still it must be 
within the same scale and with preservation of the 
balance. The most honest of our English his- 
torians, and with no superior in industry and re- 
search, Mr. Sharon Turner, has labored success- 
fully in detaching from the portrait of our first 
Protestant king the layers of soot and blood, with 
which pseudo-Catholic hate and pseudo-Protestant 
candour had coated it. But the name of Henry 
VIII. would haveoutshone thatof Alfred, and with a 
splendor which not even the omnious shadow of 
his declining life would have eclipsed, had he re- 
tained the will and possessed the power of effecting, 
what in part he promised and proposed to do ; that 
is, if he had availed himself of the wealth and landed 
masses that had been unconstitutionally alienated 
from the State, namely, transferred from the scale 
of heritable lands and revenues, to purchase and 
win back whatever had been alienated from the 
opposite scale of the Nationalty; — wrongfully 
alienated ; for it was a possession, in which every 
free subject in the nation has a living interest, a 



56 IDEA OF 

permanent, and likewise a possible personal and 

reversionary, interest ; — sacrilegiously alienated ; 

for it had been consecrated tm deal oIkeiu), to the 

it t' 

potential divinity in every man, which is the 
ground and condition of his civil existence, that 
without which a man can be neither free nor 
obliged, and by which alone, therefore, he is ca- 
pable of being a free subject or a citizen : and if, 
I say, having thus righted the balance on both 
sides, Henry had then directed the Nationalty to 
its true national purposes, (in order to which, 
however, a different division and sub- division of 
the kingdom must have superseded the present 
barbarism, which forms an obstacle to the improve- 
ment of the country, of much greater magnitude 
than men are generally aware) ; and the Nationalty 
had been distributed in proportionate channels to 
the maintenance ; — 1, of the universities and great 
schools of liberal learning ; — 2, of a pastor, pres- 
byter, or parson* in every parish ; — 3, of a school - 

* Persona icar' k^oxh v ■> persona exemplaris ; the represen- 
tative and exemplar of the personal character of the commu- 
nity or parish; of their duties and rights, of their hopes, 
privileges and requisite qualifications, as moral persons, and 
not merely living things. But this the pastoral clergy can- 
not be other than imperfectly ; they cannot be that which it 
is the paramount end and object of their establishment and 
distribution throughout the country that they should be — 
each in his sphere the germ and nucleus of^ the progressive 
civilization — unless they are in the rule married men and 
heads of families. This, however, is adduced only as an 
accessory to the great principle stated in a following page. 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 57 

master in every parish, who in due time, and 
under condition of a faithful performance of his 
arduous duties, should succeed to the pastorate ; 
so that both should be labourers in different com- 
partments of the same field, workmen engaged in 
different stages of the same process, with such 
difference of rank, as might be suggested in the 
names pastor and sub-pastor, or as now exists be- 
tween rector and curate, elder and deacon. Both 
alike, I say, being members and ministers of the na- 
tional Clerisy or Church, working to the same end, 
and determined in the choice of their means and 
the direction of their labours by one and the same 
object — namely, the production and reproduction, 
the preservation, continuance, and perfection, of 
the necessary sources and conditions of national 
civilization ; this being itself an indispensable 
condition of national safety, power and welfare, 
the strongest security and the surest provision, 
both for the permanence and the progressive ad- 
vance of whatever as laws, institutions, tenures, 
rights, privileges, freedoms, obligations, and the 
like, constitutes the public weal : — these parochial 
clerks being the great majority of the national 
clergy, the comparatively small remainder being 
principally* in ordine ad hos, Cleri doctores at 
Clems populi. 

as an instance of its beneficial consequences, not as the 
grounds of its validity. 

* Considered, I mean, in their national relations, and in 
that which forms their ordinary, their most conspicuous 



58 IDEA OF 

I may be allowed, therefore, to express the final 
cause of the whole by the office and purpose of 
the greater part ; and this is, to form and train up 
the people of the country to be obedient, free, 
useful, organizable subjects, citizens, and patriots, 
living to the benefit of the State, and prepared to 
die for its defence. The proper object and end of 
the national Church is civilization with freedom ; 
and the duty of its ministers, could they be con- 
templated merely and exclusively as officiaries of 
the national Church, would be fulfilled in the 
communication of that degree and kind of know- 
ledge to all, the possession of which is necessary 
for all in order to their civility. By civility I 
mean all the qualities essential to a citizen, and 
devoid of which no people or class of the people 
can be calculated on by the rulers and leaders of 
the State for the conservation or promotion of its 
essential interests. 

It follows, therefore, that in regard to the grounds 
and principles of action and conduct, the State 
has a right to demand of the national Church that 
its instructions should be fitted to diffuse through- 
out the people legality, that is, the obligations of 
a well calculated self-interest, under the conditions 
of a common interest determined by common laws. 

purpose and utility; for God forbid, I should deny or forget 
that the sciences, and not only the sciences both abstract 
and experimental, but the Uteres humaniores, the products of 
genial power, of whatever name, have an immediate and 
positive value even in their bearings on the national inte- 
rests. 



THE NATJONAL CHURCH. 59 

At least, whatever of higher origin and nobler and 
wider aim the ministers of the national Church, 
in some other capacity, and in the performance of 
other duties, might labour to implant and cultivate 
in the minds and hearts of their congregations 
and seminaries, should include the practical conse- 
quences of the legality above mentioned. The 
State requires that the basin should be kept full, 
and that the stream which supplies the hamlet and 
turns the mill, and waters the meadow-fields, should 
be fed and kept flowing. If this be done the 
State is content, indifferent for the rest, whether 
the basin be filled by the spring in its first ascent, 
and rising but a hand's-breadth above the bed ; or 
whether drawn from a more elevated source, 
shooting aloft in a stately column, that reflects the 
light of heaven from its shaft, and bears the Iris, 
coeli decus, promissumque Jovis lucidum on its 
spray, it fills the basin in its descent. 

" In what relation then do you place Christianity 
to the national Church ?" Though unwilling to 
anticipate what belongs to a part of my subject 
yet to come, namely, the idea of the Catholic or 
Christian Church, I am still more averse to leave 
this question, even for a moment, unanswered. 
And this is my answer. 

In relation to the national Church, Christianity, 
or the Church of Christ, is a blessed accident,* 
a providential boon, a grace of God, a mighty and 



* Let not the religious reader be offended with this phrase. 
I mean only that Christianity is an aid and instrument 



60 IDEA OF 

faithful friend, the envoy indeed and liege subject 
of another State, but which can neither administer 
the laws nor promote the ends of this other State, 
which is not of the world, without advantage, di- 
rect and indirect, to the true interests of the States, 
the aggregate of which is what we mean by the 
world, that is, the civilized world. As the olive 
tree is said in its growth to fertilize the surround- 
ing soil, to invigorate the roots of the vines in 
its immediate neighbourhood, and to improve the 
strength and flavour of the wines ; such is the re- 
lation of the Christian and the national Church. 
But as the olive is not the same plant with the 
vine, or with the elm or poplar, (that is, the 
State) with which the vine is wedded ; and as 
the vine with its prop may exist, though in less 
perfection, without the olive, or previously to its im- 
plantation ; — even so is Christianity, and a fortiori 
any particular scheme of theology derived and sup- 
posed by its partizans to be deduced from Christi- 
anity, no essential part of the being of the national 
Church, however conducive or even indispensable 
it may be to its well being. And even so a na- 
tional Church might exist, and has existed, with- 
out, because before the institution of, the Christian 
Church ; — as the Levitical Church in the Hebrew 
constitution, and the Druidical in the Keltic, would 
suffice to prove. 



which no State or realm could have produced out of its own 
elements, which no State had a right to expect. It was, most 
awefully, a God-send ! 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 61 

But here I earnestly entreat that two things 
may be remembered — first, that it is my object to 
present the Idea of a national Church, as the only 
safe criterion by which the judgment can decide 
on the existing state of things ; for when we are in 
full and clear possession of the ultimate aim of an 
institution, it is comparatively easy to ascertain 
in what respects this aim has been attained in 
other ways arising out of the growth of the nation, 
and the gradual and successive expansion of its 
germs ; in what respects the aim has been frus- 
trated by errors and diseases in the body politic ; 
and in what respects the existing institution still 
answers the original purpose, and continues to be a 
mean to necessary or most important ends, for 
which no adequate substitute can be found. First, 
I say, let it be borne in mind that my object has 
been to present the idea of a national Church, 
not the history of the Church established in this 
nation. Secondly, that two distinct functions do 
not necessarily imply or require two different 
functionaries : nay, the perfection of each may 
require the union of both in the same person. 
And in the instance now in question, great and 
grievous errors have arisen from confounding the 
functions ; and fearfully great and grievous will 
be the evils from the success of an attempt to se- 
parate them — an attempt long and passionately 
pursued, in many forms, and through many va- 
rious channels, by a numerous party which has 
already the ascendancy in the State ; and which, 
unless far other minds and far other principles 



62 IDEA OF 

than those which the opponents of this party have 
hitherto allied with their cause, are called into 
action, will obtain the ascendancy in the nation. 

I have already said that the subjects, which lie 
right and left of my road, or even jut into it, are 
so many and so important that I offer these pages 
but as a catalogue of texts and theses, which will 
have answered their purpose if they excite a cer- 
tain class of readers to desire or to supply the com- 
mentary. But there will not be wanting among 
my readers men who are no strangers to the ways 
in which my. thoughts travel : and the jointless 
sentences that make up the following chapter or 
inventory of regrets and apprehensions will suffice 
to possess them of the chief points that press on 
my mind. 

The commanding knowledge, the power of truth, 
given or obtained by contemplating the subject in 
the fontal mirror of the idea, is in Scripture ordi- 
narily expressed by vision: and no dissimilar gift, 
if not rather in its essential characters the same, 
does a great living poet speak of, as 

The vision and the faculty divine. 

Indeed of the many political ground- truths con* 
tained in the Old Testament, I cannot recall one 
more w r orthy to be selected as the moral and V en- 
voy of a Universal History, than the text in Pro- 
verbs,* Where no vision is, the people perisheth. 

* xxix. 18. 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 63 

It is now thirty years since the diversity of 
reason and the understanding*, of an idea and a con- 
ception, and the practical importance of distin- 
guishing the one from the other, were first made 
evident to me. And scarcely a month has passed 
during this long interval in which either books, or 
conversation, or the experience of life, have not 
supplied or suggested some fresh proof and instance 
of the mischiefs and mistakes derived from that 
ignorance of this truth, which I have elsewhere 
called the queen-bee in the hive of error. 

Well and truly has the understanding been de- 
fined — -facultas mediata et mediorum — the faculty 
of means to medial ends, that is, to such purposes 
or ends as are themselves but means to some 
ulterior end. 

My eye at this moment rests on a volume newly 
read by me, containing a well-written history of 
the inventions, discoveries, public improvements, 
docks, rail- ways, canals, and the like, for about 
the same period, in England and Scotland. I 
closed it under the strongest impressions of awe, 
and admiration akin to wonder. We live, I ex- 
claimed, under the dynasty of the understanding : 
and this is its golden age. 

It is the faculty of means to medial ends. With 
these the age, this favoured land, teems : they 
spring up, the armed host, — seges cly peat a— from 
the serpent's teeth sown by Cadmus : — 
mortalia semina, dentes. 

In every direction they advance, conquering and 



64 IDEA OF 

to conquer. Sea and land, rock, mountain, lake 
and moor, yea nature and all her elements, sink 
before them, or yield themselves captive! But 
the ultimate ends ? Where shall I seek for infor- 
mation concerning these ? By what name shall I 
seek for the historiographer of reason ? Where 
shall I find the annals of her recent campaigns ? the 
records of her conquests ? In the facts disclosed by 
the Mendicity Society ? In the reports on the in- 
crease of crimes, commitments ? In the proceed- 
ings of the Police ? Or in the accumulating volumes 
on the horrors and perils of population ? 

O voice, once heard 
Delightfully, increase and multiply ! 
Now death to hear ! For what can we increase 
Or multiply,* but woe, crime, penury. 

Alas ! for a certain class, the following chapter 
will, I fear, but too vividly shew the burden of 
the valley of vision, — even the burden upon 
the crowned isle, whose merchants are princes, 
whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth ; 
— who stretcheth out her hand over the sea, — 
and she is the mart of nations ! f 

* P. L. x. 729. — Ed. t Isaiah, xxii. xxiii. 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 65 



CHAPTER VII. 

Regrets and Apprehensions. 

The National Church was deemed in the dark age 
of Queen Elizabeth, in the unenlightened times of 
Burleigh, Hooker, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Lord 
Bacon, a great venerable estate of the realm ; but 
now by all the intellect of the kingdom it has been 
determined to be one of the many theological sects 
or communities established in the realm ; yet dis- 
tinguished from the rest by having its priesthood 
endowed, durante beneplacito, by favour of the Le- 
gislature, that is, of the majority, for the time being, 
of the two Houses of Parliament. The Church 
being thus reduced to a religion, religion in genere 
is consequently separated from the Church, and 
made a subject of Parliamentary determination, 
independently of this Church. The poor are with- 
drawn from the discipline of the Church. The 
education of the people is detached from the min- 
istry of the Church. Religion becomes a noun of 
multitude, or nomen collectivum, expressing the 
aggregate of all the different groups of notions and 
ceremonies connected with the invisible and su- 
pernatural. On the plausible (and in this sense 
of the word unanswerable) pretext of the multi- 
tude and variety of religions, and for the suppres- 

F 



66 REGRETS AND 

sion of bigotry and negative persecution, national 
education is to be finally sundered from all religion, 
but speedily and decisively emancipated from the 
superintendence of the national Clergy. Educa- 
tion is to be reformed, and defined as synonymous 
with instruction. The axiom of education so de- 
fined is — knowledge being power, those attain- 
ments, which give a man the power of doing what 
he wishes in order to obtain what he desires, are 
alone to be considered as knowledge, or to be 
admitted into the scheme of national education. 
The subjects to be taught in the national schools 
are to be, reading, writing, arithmetic, the me- 
chanic arts, elements and results of physical science, 
but to be taught, as much as possible, empirically. 
For all knowledge being derived from the senses, 
the closer men are kept to the fountain head, the 
more knowing they must become. 

Popular ethics consist of a digest of the criminal 
laws, and the evidence requisite for conviction 
under the same : lectures on diet, on digestion, 
on infection, and the nature and effects of a spe- 
cific virus incidental to and communicable by 
living bodies in the intercourse of society. And 
note, that in order to balance the interests of indi- 
viduals and the interests of the State, the dietetic 
and peptic text books are to be under the censor- 
ship of the Board of Excise. 

Then we have game laws, corn laws, cotton 
factories, Spitalfields, the tillers of the land paid 
by poor rates, and the remainder of the population 



APPREHENSIONS. 67 

mechanized into engines for the manufactory of 
new rich men ; — yea, the machinery of the wealth 
of the nation made up of the wretchedness, disease 
and depravity of those who should constitute the 
strength of the nation ! Disease, I say, and vice, 
while the wheels are in full motion ; but at the 
first stop the magic wealth-machine is converted 
into an intolerable w r eight of pauperism. But 
this partakes of history. The head and neck of 
the huge serpent are out of the den : the volumi- 
nous train is to come. What next ? May I not 
whisper as a fear, what senators have promised to 
demand as a right ? Yes ! the next in my filial 
bodings is spoliation ; — spoliation of the Nationalty, 
half thereof to be distributed among the land- 
owners, and the other half among the stock-bro- 
kers, and stock-owners, who are to receive it in 
lieu of the interest formerly due to them. 

But enough. I will ask only one question. 
Has the national welfare, have the weal and hap- 
piness of the people, advanced with the increase 
of the circumstantial prosperity ? Is the increasing 
number of wealthy individuals that which ought to 
be understood by the wealth of the nation? In 
answer to this, permit me to annex the following 
chapter of contents of the moral history of the 
last 130 years. 

A. A declarative act respecting certain parts of 
the Constitution, with provisions against further 
violation of the same, erroneously intituled, The 
Revolution of 1688. 



68 REGRETS AND 

B. The mechanico-corpuscular theory raised to 
the title of the mechanic philosophy, and espoused 
as a revolution in philosophy, by the actors and 
partizans of the (so called) Revolution in the 
State. 

C. Result illustrated, in the remarkable con- 
trast between the acceptation of the word, idea, 
before the Restoration, and the present use of the 
same word. Before 1660, the magnificent Son of 
Cosmo was wont to discourse with Ficini, Poli- 
tian and the princely Mirandula on the ideas of will, 
God, freedom. Sir Philip Sidney, the star of se- 
renest brilliance in the glorious constellation of 
Elizabeth's court, communed with Spenser on the 
idea of the beautiful ; and the younger Algernon 
— soldier, patriot, and statesman — with Harrington, 
Milton, and Nevil on the idea of the State : and 
in what sense it may be more truly affirmed, that 
the People, that is, the component particles of the 
body politic, at any moment existing as such, are 
in order to the State, than that the State exists 
for the sake of the People. 

As to the present use of the word. 

Dr. Holofernes, in a lecture on metaphysics, 
delivered at one of the Mechanics' Institutions, 
explodes all ideas but those of sensation ; and his 
friend, Deputy Costard, has no idea of a better 
flavored haunch of venison than he dined off at the 
London Tavern last week. He admits, (for the 
Deputy has travelled) that the French have an 
excellent idea of cooking in general; but holds 



APPREHENSIONS. 69 

that their most accomplished maitres de cuisine 
have no more idea of dressing a turtle than the 
Parisian gourmands themselves have any real idea 
of the true taste and colour of the fat. 

D. Consequences exemplified. A state of na- 
ture, or the Ouran Outang theology of the origin 
of the human race, substituted for the first ten 
chapters of the Book of Genesis ; rights of nature 
for the duties and privileges of citizens ; idealess 
facts, misnamed proofs from history, grounds of 
experience, and the like, for principles and the 
insight derived from them. Our state-policy a Cy- 
clops with one eye, and that in the back of the 
head ; our measures become either a series of ana- 
chronisms, or a truckling to events instead of the 
science, that should command them ; for all true 
insight is foresight. (Take as documents, the 
measures of the British Cabinet from the Boston 
Port-Bill, March, 1774 ; but particularly from 1789, 
to the Union with Ireland, and the Peace of 
Amiens.) Mean time, behold the true historical 
feeling, the immortal life of the nation, generation 
linked to generation by faith, freedom, heraldry, 
and ancestral fame, languishing, and giving place 
to the superstitions of wealth and newspaper re- 
putation. 

E. Talents without genius : a swarm of clever, 
well-informed men : an anarchy of minds, a des- 
potism of maxims. Hence despotism of finance 
in government and legislation — of vanity and 
sciolism in the intercourse of life — of presump- 



70 REGRETS AND 

tion, temerity, and hardness of heart in political 
economy. 

F. The guess-work of general consequences 
substituted for moral and political philosophy, and 
its most familiar exposition adopted as a text book 
in one of the Universities, and cited as autho- 
rity in the Legislature. Hence plebs pro senatu 
populoque; and the wealth of the nation (that is, 
of the wealthy individuals thereof,) and the mag- 
nitude of the revenue mistaken for the well-being 
of the people. 

G. Gin consumed by paupers to the value of 
about eighteen millions yearly : government by 
clubs of journeymen ; by saint and sinner societies, 
committees, institutions; by reviews, magazines, 
and above all by newspapers : lastly, crimes qua- 
drupled for the whole country, and in some coun- 
ties decupled. 

Concluding address to the Parliamentary leaders 
of the Liberalists and Utilitarians. 

I respect the talents of many, and the motives 
and character of some, among you too sincerely to 
court the scorn which I anticipate. But neither 
shall the fear of it prevent me from declaring 
aloud, and as a truth which I hold it the disgrace 
and calamity of a professed statesman not to know 
and acknowledge, that a permanent, nationalized, 
learned order, a national clerisy or Church is an 
essential element of a rightly constituted nation, 
without which it wants the best security alike for 
its permanence and its progression ; and for which 



APPREHENSIONS. 71 

neither tract societies nor conventicles, nor Lan- 
casterian schools, nor mechanics' institutions, nor 
lecture bazaars under the absurd name of univer- 
sities, nor all these collectively, can be a substitute. 
For they are all marked with the same asterisk of 
spuriousness, shew the same distemper-spot on the 
front, that they are empirical specifics for morbid 
symptoms that help to feed and continue the dis- 
ease. 

But you wish for general illumination : you 
would spur-arm the toes of society : you would 
enlighten the higher ranks per ascensum ab imis. 
You begin, therefore, with the attempt to popu- 
larize science : but you will only effect its plebifi- 
cation. It is folly to think of making all, or the 
many, philosophers, or even men of science and 
systematic knowledge. But it is duty and wisdom 
to aim at making as many as possible soberly and 
steadily religious ; inasmuch as the morality which 
the State requires in its citizens for its own well- 
being and ideal immortality, and without reference 
to their spiritual interest as individuals, can only 
exist for the people in the form of religion. But 
the existence of a true philosophy, or the power 
and habit of contemplating particulars in the unity 
and fontal mirror of the idea, — this in the rulers 
and teachers of a nation is indispensable to a sound 
state of religion in all classes. In fine, religion, 
true or false, is and ever has been the centre of 
gravity in a realm, to which all other things must 
and will accommodate themselves. 



72 PAST BENEFITS OF 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The subject resumed, namely, the proper aims 
and characteristic directions and channels of 
the Nationalty . The benefits of the National 
Church in time past. The present beneficial 
influences and workings of the same. 

The deep interest which, during the far larger 
portion of my life since early manhood, I have 
attached to these convictions has, I perceive, 
hurried me onwards as in a rush from the letting 
forth of accumulated waters by the sudden opening 
of the sluice gates. It is high time that I should 
return to my subject. And I have no better way 
of taking up the thread of my argument than by 
re-stating my opinion, that our eighth Henry 
would have acted in correspondence with the great 
principles of our constitution, if, having restored 
the original balance on both sides, he had deter- 
mined the Nationalty to the following objects : 
1st. to the maintenance of the Universities and 
the great liberal schools : 2ndly. to the main- 
tenance of a pastor and schoolmaster in every 
parish : 3rdly. to the raising and keeping in repair 
of the churches, schools, and other buildings of 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 73 

that kind ; and, lastly, to the maintenance of the 
proper, that is, the infirm, poor whether from age 
or sickness : one of the original purposes of the 
national reserve being the alleviation of those evils, 
which in the best forms of worldly States must 
arise, and must have been foreseen as arising, from 
the institution of individual properties and primo- 
geniture. If these duties were efficiently performed, 
and these purposes adequately fulfilled, the very 
increase of the population (which would, however, 
by these very means have been prevented from 
becoming a vicious population,) would have more 
than counterbalanced those savings in the expen- 
diture of the Nationalty occasioned by the de- 
tachment of the practitioners of Law, Medicine, 
and the like from the national clergy. That this 
transfer of the national reserve from what had 
become national evils to its original and inherent 
purpose of national benefits, instead of the sa- 
crilegious alienation which actually took place — 
that this was impracticable, is historically true : 
but no less true is it philosophically, that this im- 
practicability, — arising wholly from moral causes, 
that is, from loose manners and corrupt principles 
— does not rescue this wholesale sacrilege from 
deserving the character of the first and deadliest 
wound inflicted on the constitution of the kins:- 
dom : which term, constitution, in the body politic, 
as in bodies natural, expresses not only what has 
been actually evolved from, but likewise whatever is 
potentially contained in, the seminal principle of 



74 PAST BENEFITS OF 

the particular body, and would in its due time have 
appeared but for emasculation or disease. Other 
wounds, by which indeed the constitution of the 
nation has suffered, but which much more imme- 
diately concern the constitution of the Church, I 
shall perhaps find another place to mention. 

The mercantile and commercial class, in which 
I here comprise all the four classes that I have put 
in antithesis to the landed order, the guardian 
and depository of the permanence of the realm, as 
more characteristically conspiring to the interests 
of its progression, the improvement and general 
freedom of the country — this class, as I have 
already remarked, in the earlier states of the con- 
stitution existed but as in the bud. Yet during all 
this period of potential existence, or what we may 
call the minority of the burgess order, the National 
Church was the substitute for the most important 
national benefits resulting from the same. The 
National Church presented the only breathing hole 
of hope. The Church alone relaxed the iron fate 
by which feudal dependency, primogeniture, and 
entail would otherwise have predestined every 
native of the realm to be lord or vassal. To the 
Church alone could the nation look for the benefits 
of existing knowledge, and for the means of future 
civilization. Lastly, let it never be forgotten, 
that under the fostering wing of the Church the 
class of free citizens and burghers were reared. 
To the feudal system we owe the forms, to the 
Church the substance, of our liberty. I mention 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 75 

only two of many facts that would form the proof 
and comment of the above ; first, the origin of 
towns and cities in the privileges attached to the 
vicinity of churches and monasteries, and which, 
preparing" an asylum for the fugitive vassal and 
oppressed franklin, thus laid the first foundation 
of a class of freemen detached from the land ; — 
secondly, the holy war, which the national clergy, 
in this instance faithful to their national duties, 
waged against slavery and villenage, and with such 
success, that in the reign of Charles II., the law* 
which declared every native of the realm free by 
birth had merely to sanction an opus jam con- 
summation. Our Maker has distinguished man 
from the brute that perishes, by making hope first 
an instinct of his nature, and, secondly, an indis- 
pensable condition of his moral and intellectual 
progression : 

For every gift of noble origin 

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath. 

Wordsworth. 

But a natural instinct constitutes a rio-ht, as far 



* The Author means the Act passed at the Restoration, 
12 C. II. c. 24. " And these encroachments grew to be so 
universal, that when tenure in villenage was virtually abol- 
ished (though copyholds were preserved) by the statute of 
Charles II., there was hardly a pure villein left in the nation," 
&c. Blackstone II. c . 6. 96.— Ed. 



76 PAST BENEFITS OF 

as its gratification is compatible with the equal 
rights of others. And this principle may be 
expanded and applied to the idea of the National 
Church. 

Among the primary ends of a State (in that 
highest sense of the word, in which it is equivalent 
to the nation, considered as one body politic, and 
therefore including the National Church), there are 
two, of which the National Church (according to its 
idea) is the especial and constitutional organ and 
means. The one is, to secure to the subjects of the 
realm, generally, the hope, the chance of bettering 
their own or their children's condition. And 
though during the last three or four centuries, the 
National Church has found a most powerful surro- 
gate and ally for the effectuation of this great 
purpose in her former wards and foster-children, 
that is, in trade, commerce, free industry, and the 
arts ; yet still the Nationalty, under all its defal- 
cations, continues to feed the higher ranks by 
drawing up whatever is worthiest from below, and 
thus maintains the principle of hope in the humblest 
families, while it secures the possessions of the rich 
and noble. This is one of the two ends. The 
other is, to develope in every native of the country 
those faculties, and to provide for every native that 
knowledge and those attainments, which are neces- 
sary to qualify him for a member of the State, the 
free subject of a civilized realm. I do not mean 
those degrees of moral and intellectual cultivation 
which distinguish man from man in the same 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 77 

civilized society, much less those that separate the 
Christian from the this-worldian ; but those only 
that constitute the civilized man in contra-dis- 
tinction from the barbarian, the savage, and the 
animal. 

I have now brought together all that seemed 
requisite to put the intelligent reader in full pos- 
session of (what I believe to be) the right idea of 
the National Clergy, as an estate of the realm. 
But I cannot think my task finished without an 
attempt to rectify the too frequent false feeling 
on this subject, and to remove certain vulgar errors 
— errors, alas ! not confined to those whom the 
world call the vulgar. Ma nel mondo non e se non 
volgo y says Machiavel. I shall make no apology, 
therefore, for interposing between the preceding 
statements and the practical conclusion from them 
the following paragraph extracted from a work long 
out of print,* and of such very limited circulation 
that I might have stolen from myself with little risk 
of detection, had it not been my wish to shew that 
the convictions expressed in the preceding pages 
are not the offspring of the moment, brought forth 
for the present occasion ; but an expansion of 
sentiments and principles publicly avowed in the 
year 1817. 

Among the numerous blessings of the English 
Constitution, the introduction of an established 
Church makes an especial claim on the gratitude 

* Biog. Lit. Vol. 1.— Ed. 



78 PRESENT BENEFITS OF 

of scholars and philosophers ; in England, at least, 
where the principles of Protestantism have con- 
spired with the freedom of the government to 
double all its salutary powers by the removal of its 
abuses. 

That the maxims of a pure morality, and those 
sublime truths of the divine unity and attributes, 
which a Plato found hard to learn and more diffi- 
cult to reveal ; that these should have become the 
almost hereditary property of childhood and poverty, 
of the hovel and the workshop ; that even to the 
unlettered they sound as common place ; this is a 
fact which must withhold all but minds of the 
most vulgar cast from undervaluing the services 
even of the pulpit and the reading desk. Yet he 
who should confine the efficiency of an established 
Church to these can hardly be placed in a much 
higher rank of intellect. That to every parish 
throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a 
germ of civilization ; that in the remotest villages 
there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of 
the place may crystallize and brighten ; a model 
sufficiently superior to excite, yet sufficiently near 
to encourage and facilitate, imitation ; this inob- 
trusive, continuous agency of a Protestant Church 
Establishment, this it is which the patriot and the 
philanthropist, who would fain unite the love of 
peace with a faith in the progressive amelioration 
of mankind, cannot estimate at too high a price. 
It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, 
with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 79 

mention shall be made of coral or of pearls ; for 
the price of wisdom is above rubies. The clergy- 
man is with his parishioners and among them ; he 
is neither in the cloistered cell, nor in the wilder- 
ness, but a neighbour and family-man, whose edu- 
cation and rank admit him to the mansion of the 
rich-landholder while his duties make him the 
frequent visiter of the farm-house and the cottage. 
He is, or he may become, connected w r ith the 
families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage. 
And among the instances of the blindness or at best 
of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature of 
cupidity to inflict, I know few more striking than 
the clamours of the farmers against Church property. 
Whatever was not paid to the clergymen would 
inevitably at the next renewal of the lease be paid 
to the landholder, while, as the case at present 
stands, the revenues of the Church are in some 
sort the reversionary property of every family that 
may have a member educated for the Church or a 
daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead 
of being foreclosed and immoveable, it is, in fact, 
the only species of landed property that is essentially 
moving and circulative. That their exist no incon- 
veniences, who will pretend to assert ? But I 
have yet to expect the proof that the inconveniences 
are greater in this than in any other species ; or 
that either the farmers or the clergy would be 
benefited by forcing the latter to become either 
Trullibers or salaried placemen. Nay, I do not 
hesitate to declare my firm persuasion that what- 



80 DISQUALIFICATIONS FOR, 

ever reason of discontent the farmers may assign, 
the true cause is that they may cheat the parson 
but cannot cheat the steward : and that they are 
disappointed if they should have been able to with- 
hold only two pounds less than the legal claim, 
having expected to withhold five. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Practical Conclusion : What unfits for, and what 
excludes from, the National Church, 

The Clerisy, or National Church, being an estate 
of the realm, the Church and State, with the King 
as the sovereign head of both, constituting the body 
politic, the State in the larger sense of the word, or 
the nation dynamically considered (kv Swapei Kara 
Tvevfia, that is, as an ideal, but not the less actual 
and abiding, unity) ; and in like manner, the Na- 
tionalty being one of the two constitutional modes 
or species, of which the common wealth of the 
nation consists ; it follows by immediate conse- 
quence, that of the qualifications and preconditions 
for the trusteeship, absolutely to be required of 
the order collectively, and of every individual 
person as the conditions of his admission into this 
order, and of his capability of the usufruct or life- 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 81 

interest of any part or parcel of the Nationalty, the 
first and most indispensable, that without which all 
others are null and void, is, that the national Clergy 
and every member of the same from the highest 
to the lowest, shall be fully and exclusively citi- 
zens of the State, neither acknowledging 1 the au- 
thority, nor within the influence, of any other state 
in the world ; — full and undistracted subjects of 
this kingdom, and in no capacity, and under no 
pretences, owning any other earthly sovereign or 
visible head but the King, in whom alone the 
majesty of the nation is apparent, and by whom 
alone the unity of the nation in will and in deed 
is symbolically expressed and impersonated. 

The full extent of this first and absolutely ne- 
cessary qualification will be best seen in stating 
the contrary, that is, the absolute disqualifications, 
the existence of w r hich in any individual, and in 
any class or order of men, constitutionally inca- 
pacitates such individual and class or order from 
being inducted into the national trust : and this on 
a principle so vitally concerning the health and 
integrity of the body politic, as to render the vo- 
luntary transfer of the Nationalty, whole or in part, 
direct or indirect, to an order notoriously thus 
disqualified, a foul treason against the most funda- 
mental rights and interests of the realm, and of all 
classes of its citizens and free subjects, the indi- 
viduals of the very order itself, as citizens and 
subjects, not excepted. Now there are two things, 
and but two, which evidently and predeterminably 
G 



82 DISQUALIFICATIONS FOR 

disqualify for this great trust : the first absolutely ; 
and the second, — which in its collective operation, 
and as an attribute of the whole class, would, of 
itself, constitute the greatest possible unfitness for 
the proper ends and purposes of the National 
Church, as explained and specified in the pre- 
ceding paragraphs, and the heaviest drawback 
from the civilizing influence of the national Clergy 
in their pastoral and parochial character — the 
second, I say, by implying the former, becomes 
likewise an absolute ground of disqualification. 
It is scarcely necessary to add, what the reader 
will have anticipated, that the first absolute dis- 
qualification is allegiance to a foreign power : the 
second, the abjuration — under the command and 
authority of this power, and as by the rule of 
their order its professed lieges (alligati) — of that 
bond, which more than all other ties connects 
the citizen with his country ; which beyond all 
other securities affords the surest pledge to the 
State for the fealty of its citizens, and that which 
(when the rule is applied to any body or class of 
men, under whatever name united, where the 
number is sufficiently great to neutralize the acci- 
dents of individual temperament and circumstances,) 
enables the State to calculate on their constant 
adhesion to its interests, and to rely on their faith 
and singleness of heart in the due execution of 
whatever public or national trust may be as- 
signed to them. 

But I shall, perhaps, express the nature of this 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 83 

security more adequately by the negative. The 
marriage tie is a bond the preclusion of which by 
an antecedent obligation, that overrules the acci- 
dents of individual character and is common to the 
whole order, deprives the State of a security with 
which it cannot dispense. I will not say that it is 
a security which the State may rightfully demand 
of all its adult citizens, competently circumstanced, 
by positive enactment: though I might shelter 
the position under the authority of the great 
publicists and state lawyers of the Augustan age, 
who, in the Lex Papia Poppcea* enforced anew 
a principle common to the old Roman Constitution 
with that of Sparta. But without the least fear 
of confutation, though in the full foresight of 
vehement contradiction, I do assert that the State 
may rightfully demand of any number of its sub- 
jects united in one body or order the absence of all 
customs, initiative vows, covenants and by-laws in 
that order, precluding the members of such body 
collectively and individually from affording this 
security. In strictness of principle, I might here 
conclude the sentence, though as it now stands it 
would involve the assertion of a right in the State 
to suppress any order confederated under laws so 
anti-civic. But I am no friend to any rights that 
can be disjoined from the duty of enforcing them. 

* A.U.C. 76°2. — inditi custodes, et lege Papia Poppaca prtf- 
rniis ijiducti, ut, si aprivilegiis parentum cessaretur,velut parens 
omnium poputus vacantia tenevet. Tac. Ann. III. 28. — Ed. 



84 DISQUALIFICATIONS FOR 

I therefore at once confine and complete the sen- 
tence thus : — The State not only possesses the 
right of demanding, but is in duty bound to demand, 
the above as a necessary condition of its entrusting 
to any order of men, and to any individual as a 
member of a known order, the titles, functions, and 
investments of the National Church. 

But if any doubt could attach to the proposition, 
whether thus stated or in the perfectly equivalent 
converse, that is, that the existence and known 
enforcement of the injunction or prohibitory by- 
law, before described, in any order or incorporation 
constitutes an a priori disqualification for the 
trusteeship of the Nationalty, and an insuperable 
obstacle to the establishment of such an order or 
of any members of the same as a national Clergy, 
— such doubt would be removed, as soon as this 
injunction, or vow exacted and given, or what- 
ever else it may be, by which the members oF 
the order, collectively and as such, incapacitate 
themselves from affording this security for their 
full, faithful, and unbiassed application of a na- 
tional trust to its proper and national purposes, is 
found in conjunction with, and aggravated by, the 
three following circumstances. First, that this 
incapacitation originates in, and forms part of, the 
allegiance of the order to a foreign sovereignty : 
secondly, that it is notorious that the canon or 
prescript, on which it is grounded, was first en- 
forced on the secular clergy universally, after 
long and obstinate reluctation on their side, and on 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 85 

that of their natural sovereigns in the several 
realms, to which as subjects they belonged; and 
that it is still retained in force, and its revocation 
inflexibly refused, as the direct and only adequate 
means of supporting that usurped and foreign 
sovereignty, and of securing by virtue of the ex- 
patriating and insulating effect of its operation 
the devotion and allegiance of the order* to their 
visible head and sovereign : and thirdly, that the 
operation of the interdict precludes one of the most 
constant and influential ways and means of pro- 
moting the great paramount end of a National 
Church, the progressive civilization of the com- 
munity. 

Emollit mores, nee sinit esseferos. 

And now let me conclude these preparatory 
notices by compressing the sum and substance of 
my argument into this one sentence. Though 
many things may detract from the comparative 



* For the fullest and ablest exposition of this point, I 
refer to the Rev. Joseph Blanco White's " Practical and 
Internal Evidence against Catholicism," and to that ad- 
mirable work, " Riforma d' Italia/' written by a professed 
and apparently sincere Roman Catholic, a work which well 
merits translation. I know no work so well fitted to soften 
the prejudices against the theoretical doctrines of the Latin 
Church, and to deepen our reprobation of what it actually, 
and practically is in all countries where the expediency of 
keeping up appearances, as in Protestant neighbourhoods, 
does not operate. 



86 IDEA OF THE KING 

fitness of individuals or of particular classes for 
the trust and functions of the Nationalty, there 
are only two absolute disqualifications : and these 
are, allegiance to a foreign power, or the ac- 
knowledgement of any other visible head of the 
Church, but our sovereign lord the King: and 
compulsory celibacy in connection with, and in 
dependence on, a foreign and extra-national 
head. 



CHAPTER X. 

On the King and the Nation. 

A treatise? why, the subjects might, I own, ex- 
cite some apprehension of the sort. But it will 
be found like sundry Greek treatises among the 
tinder-rolls of Herculaneum, with titles of as large 
promise, somewhat largely and irregularly abbre- 
viated in the process of unrolling. In fact, neither 
my purpose nor my limits permit more than a few 
hints which may prepare the reader for some of 
the positions assumed in the second part of this 
volume. 

Of the King with the two Houses of Parliament, 
as constituting the State (in the especial and an- 
tithetic sense of the word) I have already spoken: 
and what remains is only to determine the proper and 



AND THE NATION. 87 

legitimate objects of its superintendence and con- 
trol. On what is the power of the State rightfully 
exercised ? Now, I am not arguing in a court of 
law ; and my purpose would be grievously misun- 
derstood if what I say should be taken as intended 
for an assertion of the fact. Neither of facts, nor 
of statutory and demandable rights do I speak : but 
exclusively of the State according to the idea. 
And in accordance with the idea of the State, I do 
not hesitate to answer that the legitimate objects 
of its power comprise all the interests and concerns 
of the proprietage, both landed and personal, and 
whether inheritably vested in the lineage or in the 
individual citizen ; and these alone. Even in the 
lives and limbs of the lieges the King, as the head 
and arm of the State, has an interest of property : 
and in any trespass against them the King appears 
as plaintiff. 

The chief object, for which men, who from the 
beginning existed as a social bond, first formed 
themselves into a state and on the social super- 
induced the political relation, was not the protec- 
tion of their lives but of their property. The 
natural man is too proud an animal to admit that 
he needs any other protection for his life than what 
his own courage and that of his clan can bestow. 
Where the nature of the soil and climate has pre- 
cluded all property but personal, and admitted that 
only in its simplest forms, as in Greenland for 
instance, — there men remain in the domestic state 
and form neighbourhoods, not governments. And 



88 IDEA OF THE KING 

in North America the chiefs appear to exercise 
government in those tribes only which possess in- 
dividual landed property. Among the rest the 
chief is the general, a leader in war ; not a magis- 
trate. To property and to its necessary inequalities 
must be referred all human laws, that would not be 
laws without and independent of any conventional 
enactment ; that is, all State-legislation.* 

Next comes the King, as the head of the National 
Church or Clerisy, and the protector and supreme 
trustee of the Nationalty : the power of the same 
in relation to its proper objects being exercised by 
the King and the Houses of Convocation, of which, 
as before of the State, the King is the head and arm. 
And here if it had been my purpose to enter at 
once on the developement of this position, together 
with the conclusions to be drawn from it, I should 
need with increased earnestness remind the reader 
that I am neither describing what the National 
Church now is, nor determining what it ought to 
be. My statements respect the idea alone as 
deduced from its original purpose and ultimate 
aim : and of the idea only must my assertions be 
understood. But the full exposition of this point 
is not necessary for the appreciation of the late 
Bill which is the subject of the following part 
of the volume. It belongs indeed to the chapter 
with which I had intended to conclude this volume, 
and which, should my health permit, and the cir- 

* See the Friend, i, p. 274. 3rd edit,— Ed. 



AND THE NATION. 89 

cumstances warrant it, it is still my intention to 
let follow the present work — namely, my humble 
contribution towards an answer to the question, 
What is to be done now ? For the present, there- 
fore, it will be sufficient, if I recall to the reader's 
recollection that formerly the national Clerisy, in 
the two Houses of Convocation duly assembled and 
represented, taxed themselves. But as to the pro- 
per objects, on which the authority of the Convo- 
cation with the King as its head was to be exercised , 
— these the reader will himself without difficulty 
decypher by referring to what has been already 
said respecting- the proper and distinguishing ends 
and purposes of a National Church. 

I pass, therefore, at once to the relations of the 
Nation, or the State in the larger sense of the 
word, to the State especially so named, and to the 
Crown. And on this subject again I shall confine 
myself to a few important, yet, I trust, not common 
nor obvious, remarks respecting the conditions 
requisite or especially favourable to the health and 
vigour of the realm. From these again I separate 
those, the nature and importance of which cannot 
be adequately exhibited but by adverting to the 
consequences which have followed their neglect or 
inobservance, reserving them for another place : 
while for the present occasion I select two only ; 
but these, I dare believe, not unworthy the name of 
political principles, or maxims, that is, regulce quce 
inter maximas numerari merentur. And both of 
them forcibly confirm and exemplify a remark, 



90 IDEA OF THE KING 

often and in various ways suggested to my mind, 
that with, perhaps, one* exception, it would be 
difficult in the whole compass of language to find 
a metaphor so commensurate, so pregnant, or 
suggesting so many points of elucidation, as that 
of body politic, as the exponent of a State or Realm. 
I have little admiration for the many-jointed simi- 
litudes of Flavel, and other finders of moral and 
spiritual meanings in the works of art and nature, 
where the proportion of the likeness to the differ- 
ence not seldom reminds me of the celebrated com- 
parison of the morning twilight to a boiled lobster, f 
But the correspondence between the body politic 
and the body natural holds even in the detail of 
application. Let it not however be supposed that 
I expect to derive any proof of my positions from 
this analogy. My object in thus prefacing them 
is answered, if I have shown cause for the use of 
the physiological terms by which I have sought to 
render my meaning intelligible. 

The first condition then required, in order to a 
sound constitution of the body politic, is a due pro- 
portion of the free and permeative life and energy 
of the nation to the organized powers brought within 
containing channels. What those vital forces that 
seem to bear an analogy to the imponderable agents, 
magnetic, or galvanic, in bodies inorganic, if indeed, 

* That namely of the Word (John, i. 1.) for the Divine 
Alterity ; the Deus Alter et Idem of Philo ; Deitas Objectiva. 

t Hudibras Pt. II. c. 2 r. 29.— Ed. 



AND THE NATION. 91 

they are not the same in a higher energy and un- 
der a different law of action — what these, I say, 
are in the living body in distinction from the fluids 
in the glands and vessels — the same, or at least 
holding a like relation, are the indeterminable, but 
yet actual, influences of intellect, information, pre- 
vailing principles and tendencies, (to which we 
must add the influence of property, or income, 
where it exists without right of suffrage attached 
thereto), to the regular, definite, and legally recog- 
nized powers in the body politic. But as no simile 
runs on all four legs (nihil simile est idem), so 
here the difference in respect of the body pojitic is, 
that in sundry instances the former, that is, the 
permeative, species of force is capable of being 
converted into the latter, of being as it were or- 
ganized and rendered a part of the vascular system, 
by attaching a measured and determinate political 
right or privilege thereto. 

What the exact proportion, however, of the two 
kinds of force should be, it is impossible to prede- 
termine. But the existence of a disproportion is 
sure to be detected sooner or later by the effects.. 
Thus : the ancient Greek democracies, the hot-beds 
of art, science, genius, and civilization, fell into 
dissolution from the excess of the former, the per- 
meative power deranging the functions, and by 
explosions shattering the organic structures, which 
they should have enlivened. On the contrary, the 
Republic of Venice fell by the contrary extremes. 
For there all political power was confined to the 



92 IDEA OF THE KING 

determinate vessels, and these becoming more and 
more rigid, even to an ossification of the arteries, 
the State, in which the people were nothing, lost 
all power of resistance ad extra. 

Under this head, in short, there are three possi- 
ble sorts of malformation to be noticed. The first 
is, the adjunction or concession of direct political 
power to personal force and influence, whether 
physical or intellectual, existing in classes or ag- 
gregates of individuals, without those fixed or tan- 
gible possessions, freehold, copyhold, or leasehold, 
in land, house, or stock. The power resulting 
from the acquisition of knowledge or skill, and 
from the superior developement of the understand- 
ing is, doubtless, of a far nobler kind than mere 
physical strength and fierceness ; the one being 
peculiar to the animal man, the other common to 
him with the bear, the buffalo, and the mastiff. 
And if superior talents, and the mere possession of 
knowledges, such as can be learned at Mechanics' 
Institutions, were regularly accompanied with a 
will in harmony with the reason, and a consequent 
subordination of the appetites and passions to the 
ultimate ends of our being ; — if intellectual gifts 
and attainments were infallible signs of wisdom 
and goodness in the same proportion, and the 
knowing and clever were always rational ; — if the 
mere facts of science conferred or superseded the 
softening humanizing influences of the moral world, 
that habitual presence of the beautiful or the seemly, 
and that exemption from all familiarity with the 



AND THE NATION. 93 

gross, the mean, and the disorderly, whether in 
look or language, or in the surrounding objects, 
in which the main efficacy of a liberal education 
consists ; — and if, lastly, these acquirements and 
powers of the understanding could be shared equally 
oy the whole class, and did not, as by a necessity 
of nature they ever must do, fall to the lot of two 
or three in each several group, club, or neighbour- 
hood ; — then, indeed, by an enlargement of the 
Chinese system, political power might not unwisely 
be conferred as the honorarium or privilege on 
having* passed through all the forms in the national 
schools, without the security of political ties, with- 
out those fastenings and radical fibres of a collec- 
tive and registrable property, by which the citizen 
inheres in and belongs to the commonwealth, as a 
constituent part either of the Proprietage, or of 
the National ty ; either of the State or of the National 
Church. But as the contrary of all these suppo- 
sitions may be more safely assumed, the practical 
conclusion will be — not that the requisite means of 
intellectual developement and growth should be 
withholden from any native of the soil, which it was 
at all times wicked to wish, and which it would be 
now r silly to attempt; but that the gifts of the under- 
standing whether the boon of a genial nature, or the 
reward of more persistent application, should be al- 
lowed fair play in the acquiring of that proprietor- 
ship^ to which a certain portionof political power be- 
longs as its proper function. For in this way there is 
at least a strong probability that intellectual power 



94 IDEA OF THE KING 

will be armed with political power, only where it 
has previously been combined with and guarded 
by the moral qualities of prudence, industry, and 
self-control. And this is the first of the three kinds 
of mal-organization in a state ; — namely, direct 
political power without cognizable possession. 

The second is, the exclusion of any class or nu- 
merous body of individuals, who have notoriously 
risen into possession, and the influence inevitably 
connected with known possession, under pretence 
of impediments that do not directly or essentially 
affect the character of the individuals as citizens, 
or absolutely disqualify them for the performance 
of civic duties. Imperfect, yet oppressive and ir- 
ritating, ligatures these that peril the trunk, the 
circulating current of which they would withhold, 
even more than the limb which they would fain 
excommunicate. 

The third and last is, a gross incorrespondency, 
in relation to our own country, of the proportion 
of the antagonist interests of the body politic in 
the representative body, in the two Houses of Par- 
liament, to the actual proportion of the same in- 
terests and of the public influence exerted by the 
same in the nation at large. Whether in conse- 
quence of the gradual revolution which has trans- 
ferred to the magnates of the landed interest so 
large a portion of that borough representation which 
was to have been its counterbalance ; whether the 
same causes which have deranged the equilibrium 



AND THE NATION. 95 

of the landed and the* monied interests in the Le- 
gislature have not likewise deranged the balance 
between the two unequal divisions of the landed 
interest itself, namely, the Major Barons, or great 
land-owners, with or without title, and the great 
body of the agricultural community, and thus given 



* Monied, used arbitrarily, as in preceding pages the words, 
Personal and Independent, from my inability to find any one 
self-interpreting word, that would serve for the generic name 
of the four classes, on which I have stated the interest of 
progression more especially to depend, and with it the free- 
dom which is the indispensable condition and propelling 
force of all national progress : even as the counter-pole, the 
other great interest of the body politic, its permanency, is 
more especially committed to the landed order, as its natural 
guardian and depository. I have therefore had recourse to 
the convenient figure of speech, by which a conspicuous 
part or feature of a subject is used to express the whole ; and 
the reader will be so good as to understand, that the monied 
order in this place comprehends and stands for the com- 
mercial, manufacturing, distributive, and professional classes 
of the community. 

Only a few days ago, an accident placed in my hand a 
work of which, from my very limited opportunities of see- 
ing new publications, I had never before heard, — Mr. 
Crawfurd's History of the Indian Archipelago — the work of 
a wise as well as of an able and well-informed man. Need 
I add that it was no ordinarv gratification to find that in 
respect of certain prominent positions, maintained in this 
volume, I had unconsciously been fighting behind the shield 
of one whom i deem it an honour to follow. But the sheets 
containing the passages having been printed off, I avail 
myself of this note to insert the sentences from Mr. Craw- 
furd's History, rather than lose the confirmation which a 



96 IDEA OF THE KING 

to the real or imagined interests of the compa- 
ratively few the imposing name of the interest of 
the whole, the landed interest; — these are questions, 
to which the obdurate adherence to the jail- 
crowding game laws, (which during the reading of 
the Litany, I have sometimes been tempted to 



coincidence with so high an authority has produced on ray 
own mind, and the additional weight which my sentiments 
will receive in the judgment of others. The first of the two 
extracts the reader will consider as annexed to pp. 25 — 27. 
of this volume ; the second to the paragraph (p. 87.) on the 
protection of property, as the end chiefly proposed in the 
formation of a fixed government, quoted from a work of my 
own, published ten or eleven years before the appearance of 
Mr. Crawfurd's History, which I notice in order to give the 
principle in question that probability of its being grounded 
in fact, which is derived from the agreement of two inde- 
pendent minds. The first extract Mr. Crawfurd introduces 
by the remark that the possession of wealth, derived from 
a fertile soil, encouraged the progress of absolute power in 
Java. He then proceeds — 

Extract I. 
The devotion of a people to agricultural industry, by ren- 
dering themselves more tame and their property more tan- 
gible, went still farther towards it : for wherever agriculture 
is the principal pursuit, there it may certainly be reckoned, 
that the people will be found living under an absolute go- 
vernment. — Vol. iii. p. 24. 

Extract II. 
In cases of murder, no distinction is made (in the ancient 
laws of the Indian Islanders) between wilful murder and 
chance-medley. It is the loss, which the family or tribe 
sustains, that is considered, and the pecuniary compensation 
was calculated to make up that loss. — lb. p. 123. 



AND THE NATION. 97 

include, by a sort of sub intellige, in the petitions 
— from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncha- 
ritableness ; from battle, murder, and sudden 
death, Good Lord, deliver us !) to which the old 
corn laws, and the exclusion of the produce of our 
own colonies from our distilleries, during the war, 
against the earnest recommendation of the govern- 
ment, the retention of the statutes against usury, 
and other points of minor importance or of less safe 
handling, may seem at a first view to suggest an 
answer in the affirmative ; but which, for reasons 
before assigned, I shall leave unresolved, content 
if only I have made the principle itself intelligible. 
The following anecdote, for I have no means of 
ascertaining its truth, and no warrant to offer for 
its accuracy, I give not as a fact in proof of an 
overbalance of the landed interest, but as an in- 
distinctly remembered hearsay, in elucidation of 
what is meant by the words. Some eighteen or 
twenty years ago — for so long I think it must have 
been, since the circumstance w r as first related to 
me — my illustrious (alas ! I must add, I fear, my 
late) friend, Sir Humphrey Davy, at Sir Joseph 
Banks's request, analyzed a portion of an East In- 
dian import, known by the names of cutch, and 
terra Japonica ; but which he ascertained to be a 
vegetable extract, consisting almost wholly of 
pure tannin : and further trials, with less pure spe- 
cimens, still led to the conclusion that the average 
product would be seven parts in ten of the tanning 

H 



98 IDEA OF THE KING 

principle. This discovery was* communicated to 
the trade ; and on inquiry made at the India House, 

* And, (if I recollect right, though it was not from him, 
that I received the anecdote) by a friend of Sir Humphrey's, 
whom I am proud to think my friend likewise, and by an 
elder claim : l — a man whom I have seen now in his harvest 
field, or the market, now in a committee-room with the Rick- 
mans and Ricardos of the age ; al^ another time with Davy, 
MS/ ollaston, and the Wedgewoods ; now with Wordsworth,, 
Southey, and other friends not unheard of in the republic of 
letters ; now in the drawing-rooms of the rich and the noble, 
and now presiding at the annual dinner of a village benefit 
society ; and in each seeming to be in the very place he was 
intended for, and taking the part to which his tastes, talents, 
and attainments gave him an admitted right. And yet this 
is not the most remarkable, not the individualizing, trait of 
my friend's character. It is almost overlooked in the ori- 
ginality and raciness of his intellect ; in the life, freshness 
and practical value of his remarks and notices, truths plucked 
as they are growing-, and delivered to you with the dew on 
them, the fair earnings of an observing eye, armed and kept 
on the watch by thought and meditation ; and above all, in 
the integrity or entireness of his being, (integrum et sine cera 
vas), the steadiness of his attachments, and the activity and 
persistency of a benevolence, which so graciously presses a 
warm temper into the service of a yet warmer heart, and so 
lights up the little flaws and imperfections, incident to hu- 
manity in its choicest specimens, that were their removal at 
the option of his friends, (and few have, or deserve to have 
so many) not a man among them but would vote for leaving 
him as he is. 

This is a note digressive ; but, as the height of the offence 
is, that the garnish is too good for the dish, I shall confine 
my apology to a confession of the fault. 



1 The late excellent Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey, So- 
merset. — Ed. 



AND THE NATION. 99 

it was found that this cutch could be prepared in 
large quantities, and imported at a price which, 
after an ample profit to the importers, it would very 
well answer the purposes of the tanners to give. 
The trade itself, too, was likely to be greatly be- 
nefitted and enlarged by being rendered less de- 
pendent on particular situations ; while the reduc- 
tion of the price at which it could be offered to the 
foreign consumer, acting in conjunction with the 
universally admitted superiority of the English 
leather, might be reasonably calculated on as en- 
abling us to undersell our foreign rivals in their 
own markets. Accordingly, an offer was made on 
the part of the principal persons interested in the 
leather trade to purchase, at any price below the 
sum that had been stated to them as the highest 
or extreme price, as large a quantity as it was pro- 
bable that the Company would find it feasible or 
convenient to import in the first instance. Well ! 
the ships went out, and the ships returned, again 
and again : and no increase in the amount of the 
said desideratum appearing among the imports, 
enough only being imported to meet the former 
demand of the druggists, and (it is whispered) of 
certain ingenious transmuters of Bohea into Hyson, 
— my memory does not enable me to determine 
whether the inquiry into the occasion of this dis- 
appointment was made, or whether it was anti- 
cipated by a discovery that it would be useless. 
But it was generally understood that the tanners 
had not been the only persons, whose attention had 



100 THE OMNIPOTENCE 

been drawn to the qualities of the article, and the 
consequences of its importation ; and that a very 
intelligible hint had been given to persons of known 
influence in Leadenhall-street, that in case any such 
importation were allowed, the East- India Com- 
pany must not expect any support from the landed 
interest in Parliament at the next renewal, or 
motion for the renewal of their Charter. The East 
India Company might reduce the price of bark, 
one half or more ; and the British navy, and the 
grandsons of our present senators, might thank 
them for thousands and myriads of noble oaks, left 
unstript in consequence — this may be true ; but no 
less true is it, that the free merchants would soon 
reduce the price of good tea in the same proportion, 
and monopolists ought to have a feeling for each 
other. 



CHAPTER XI. 

The relations of the potential to the actual. The 
omnipotence of Parliament ; — of what kind. 

So much in explanation of the first of the two con- 
ditions* of the health and vigour of a body politic : 
and far more, I must confess, than I had myself 
reckoned on. I will endeavour to indemnify the 

* See ante, p. 90.— Ed, 



OF PARLIAMENT. 101 

reader by despatching the second in a few sen- 
tences, which could not so easily have been ac- 
complished without the explanations given in the 
preceding- paragraphs. For as we have found the 
first condition in the due proportion of the free 
and permeative life of the State to the powers or- 
ganized, and severally determined by their appro- 
priate containing or conducting nerves, or vessels ; 
the second condition is a due proportion of the 
potential, that is, latent or dormant power to the 
actual power. In the first condition, both powers 
alike are awake and in act. The balance is pro- 
duced by the polarization of the actual power, 
that is, the opposition of the actual power organ- 
ized to the actual power free and permeating the 
organs. In the second, the actual power, in toto, 
is opposed to the potential. It has been frequently 
and truly observed that in England, where the 
ground plan, the skeleton, as it were, of the go- 
vernment is a monarchy, at once buttressed and 
limited by the aristocracy, (the assertions of its 
popular character finding a better support in the 
harangues and theories of popular men, than in 
state-documents and the records of clear history,) 
a far greater degree of liberty is, and long has 
been, enjoyed than ever existed in the ostensibly 
freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths 
of ancient or of modern times; — greater, indeed, 
and with a more decisive predominance of the 
spirit of freedom than the wisest and most philan- 
thropic statesmen of antiquity, or than the great 



102 THE OMNIPOTENCE 

Commonwealth's-men, (the stars of that narrow 
interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of 
the first and second Charles's reigns) believed 
compatible, the one with the safety of the State, 
the other with the interests of morality. 

Yes ! for little less than a century and a half 
Englishmen have collectively and individually lived 
and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency 
than the citizens of any known* republic, past or 
present. The fact is certain. It has been often 
boasted of, but never, I think, clearly explained. 
The solution must, it is obvious, be sought for in 
the combination of circumstances, to which we 
owe the insular privilege of a self- evolving Con- 
stitution : and the following will, I think, be found 
the main cause of the fact in question. Extremes 
meet — an adage of inexhaustible exemplification. 
A democratic republic and an absolute monarchy 
agree in this ; that, in both alike, the nation or 
people delegates its whole power. Nothing is left 
obscure, nothing suffered to remain in the idea, 



* It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of 
North America should have been excepted. But the iden- 
tity of stock, language, customs, manners and laws scarcely 
allows me to consider this an exception : even though it were 
quite certain both that it is and that it will continue such. 
It was, at all events, a remark worth remembering, which 
I once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one I must ad- 
mit), that where every man may take liberties, there is little 
liberty for any man ;^-or, that where every man takes liber- 
ties, no man can enjoy any, 



OF PARLIAMENT. 103 

unevolved and only acknowledged as an existing-, 
yet indeterminable right. A Constitution such 
states can scarcely be said to possess. The whole 
will of the body politic is in act at every moment. 
But in the constitution of England according to 
the idea, (which in this instance has demonstrated 
its actuality by its practical influence, and this 
too though counter-worked by fashionable errors 
and maxims, that left their validity behind in the 
law-courts, from which they were borrowed) the 
nation has delegated its power, not without mea- 
sure and circumscription, whether in respect of 
the duration of the trust, or of the particular inte- 
rests entrusted. 

The omnipotence of Parliament, in the mouth 
of a lawyer, and understood exclusively of the re- 
straints and remedies within the competence of 
our law-courts, is objectionable only as bombast. 
It is but a puffing pompous way of stating a plain 
matter of fact. Yet in the times preceding the 
Restoration even this was not universally admitted. 
And it is not without a fair show of reason that 
the shrewd and learned author of u The Royalist's 
Defence,'' printed in the year 1648, (a tract of 172 
pages, small quarto, from which I now transcribe) 
thus sums up his argument and evidences : 

" Upon the whole matter clear it is, the Parlia- 
ment itself (that is, the King, the Lords, and 
Commons) although unanimously consenting, are 
not boundless : the Judges of the realm by the 
fundamental law of England have power to deter- 



104 THE OMNIPOTENCE 

mine which Acts of Parliaments are binding and 
which void." p. 48. — That a unanimous declaration 
of the judges of the realm that any given Act of 
Parliament was against right reason and the fun- 
damental law of the land (that is, the constitution 
of the realm), would render such Act null and 
void, was a principle that did not want defenders 
among the lawyers of elder times. And in a state 
of society in which the competently informed and 
influential members of the community, (the national 
Clerisy not included), scarcely perhaps trebled the 
number of the members of the two Houses, and 
Parliaments were so often tumultuary congresses 
of a victorious party rather than representatives 
of the State, the right and power here asserted 
might have been wisely vested in the judges of the 
realm : and with at least equal wisdom, under 
change of circumstances, has the right been suf- 
fered to fall into abeyance. " Therefore let the 
potency of Parliament be that highest and utter- 
most, beyond which a court of law looketh not : 
and within the sphere of the Courts quicquid Rex 
cum Parliamento voluit , fatum sit!" 

But if the strutting phrase be taken, as from 
sundry recent speeches respecting the fundamental 
institutions of the realm it may be reasonably in- 
ferred that it has been taken, that is, absolutely, 
and in reference, not to our courts of law exclu- 
sively, but to the nation, to England with all her 
venerable heir-looms, and with all her germs of 
reversionary wealth, — thus used and understood , 



Or PARLIAMENT. 105 

the omnipotence of Parliament is an hyperbole 
that would contain mischief in it, were it only 
that it tends to provoke a detailed analysis of the 
materials of the joint-stock company, to which so 
terrific an attribute belongs, and the competence 
of the shareholders in this earthly omnipotence to 
exercise the same. And on this head the obser- 
vations and descriptive statements given in the 
fifth chapter of the old tract, just cited, retain all 
their force ; or if any have fallen off, their place 
has been abundantly filled up by new growths. 
The degree and sort of knowledge, talent, probity, 
and prescience, which it would be only too easy, 
were it not too invidious, to prove from acts and 
measures presented by the history of the last half 
century, are but scant measure even when ex- 
erted within the sphere and circumscription of the 
constitution, and on the matters properly and pe- 
culiarly appertaining to the State according to the 
idea ; — this portion of moral and mental endowment 
placed by the side of the plusquam-gig&ntic height 
and amplitude of power, implied in the unqualified 
use of the phrase, omnipotence of Parliament, and 
with its dwarfdom intensified by the contrast, 
would threaten to distort the countenance of truth 
itself with the sardonic laugh of irony.* 

* I have not in my possession the morning paper in which 
I read it, or I should with great pleasure transcribe an ad- 
mirable passage from the present King of Sweden's Address 
to the Storthing, or Parliament of Norway, on the necessary 
limits of Parliamentary power, consistently with the exis- 



106 THE OMNIPOTENCE 

The non-resistance of successive generations 
has ever been, and with evident reason, deemed 
equivalent to a tacit consent, on the part of the 
nation, and as finally legitimating the act thus ac- 
quiesced in, however great the dereliction of prin- 
ciple, and breach of trust, the original enactment 
may have been. I hope, therefore, that without 
offence I may venture to designate the Septennial 
Act as an act of usurpation, tenfold more dangerous 
to the true liberty of the nation than the pretext for 
the measure, namely, the apprehended Jacobite 
leaven from a new election, was at all likely to 
have proved : and I repeat the conviction which I 
have expressed in reference to the practical sup- 
pression of the Convocation, that no great principle 
was ever invaded or trampled on, that did not 
sooner or later avenge itself on the country, and 
even on the governing classes themselves, by the 
consequences of the precedent. The statesman 
who has not learned this from history has missed 
its most valuable result, and might in my opinion 
as profitably, and far more delightfully, have 
devoted his hours of study to Sir Walter Scott's 
Novels.* 

tence of a constitution. But I can with confidence refer 
the reader to the speech, as worthy of an Alfred. Every 
thing indeed that I have heard or read of this sovereign, 
has contributed to the impression on my mind, that he is a 
good and a wise man, and worthy to be the king of a virtuous 
people, the purest specimen of the Gothic race. 

* This would not be the first time that these fascinating 
volumes had been recommended as a substitute for history 



OF PARLIAMENT. 107 

But I must draw in my reins. Neither my limits 
permit, nor does my present purpose require, that 
I should do more than exemplify the limitation 
resulting from that latent or potential power, a due 
proportion of which to the actual powers I have 
stated as the second condition of the health and 
vigor of a body politic, by an instance bearing 
directly on the measure which in the following 
section I am to aid in appreciating, and which was 
the occasion of the whole work. The principle 
itself, — which, as not contained within the rule 
and compass of law, its practical manifestations 
being indeterminable and inappreciable a priori, 
and then only to be recorded as having manifested 
itself, when the predisposing causes and the en- 
during effects prove the unific mind and energy of 
the nation to have been in travail ; when they have 
made audible to the historian that voice of the 
people which is the voice of God ; — this principle, 
I say, (or the power, that is the subject of it) which 
by its very essence existing* and working as an 
idea only, except in the rare and predestined 
epochs of growth and reparation, might seem to 
many fitter matter for verse than for sober argu- 
ment, — T will, by way of compromise, and for the 
amusement of the reader, sum up in the rhyming 

— a ground of recommendation, to which I could not con- 
scientiously accede; though some half dozen of these 
Novels, with a perfect recollection of the contents of every 
page, I read over more often in the course of a year than I 
can honestly put down to my own credit. 



108 THE OMNIPOTENCE 

prose of an old Puritan poet, consigned to contempt 
by Mr. Pope, but whose writings, with all then- 
barren flats and dribbling common-place, contain 
nobler principles, profounder truths, and more that 
is properly and peculiarly poetic, than are to be 
found in his own works.* The passage in question, 
however, I found occupying the last page on a 
flying-sheet of four leaves, entitled England's 
Misery and Remedy, in a judicious Letter from 
an Utter- Barrister to his Special Friend, con- 
cerning Lieut-Col. Lilburnes Imprisonment in 
Newgate ; and I beg leave to borrow the intro- 
duction, together with the extract, or that part at 
least, which suited my purpose. 

" Christian Reader, having a vacant place for 
some few lines, I have made bold to use some of 
Major George Withers his verses out of Vox 
Pacifica, page 199. 



* If it were asked whether I consider the works of the 
one of equal value with those of the other, or hold George 
Withers to be as great a writer as Alexander Pope, — my 
answer would be that I am as little likely to do so, as the 
querist would be to put no greater value on a highly 
wrought vase of pure silver from the hand of a master, than 
on an equal weight of copper ore that contained a small 
per centage of separable gold scattered through it. The 
reader will be pleased to observe that in the passage here 
cited, the " State" is used in the largest sense, and as sy- 
nonymous with the realm, or entire body politic, including 
Church and State in the narrower and special sense of the 
latter term. 



OF PARLIAMENT. 109 

u Let not your King and Parliament in one, 
Much less apart, mistake themselves for that 
Which is most worthy to be thought upon : 
Nor think they are, essentially, the State. 
Let them not fancy, that th' authority 
And privileges upon them bestown, 
Conferr'd are to set up a majesty, 
A power, or a glory, of their own ! 
But let them know, 'twas for a deeper life, 

Which they but represent 

That there's on earth a yet auguster thing, 
Veil'd tho' it be, than Parliament and King." 



CHAPTER XII. 

The preceding position exemplified. The origin 
and meaning of the Coronation Oath, in respect 
of the National Church. In what its moral 
obligation consists. Recapitulation. 

And here again the " Royalist's Defence" furnishes 
me with the introductory paragraph : and I am 
always glad to find in the words of an elder writer, 
what I must otherwise have said in my own person 
— otium simul et auctoritatem. 

" All Englishmen grant, that arbitrary power 
is destructive of the best purposes for which power 
is conferred : and in the preceding chapter it has 
been shown, that to give an unlimited authority 
over the fundamental laws and rights of the nation, 



110 OBLIGATION OF THE CORONATION OATH 

even to the King and two Houses of Parliament 
jointly, though nothing so bad as to have this 
boundless power in the King alone, or in the 
Parliament alone, were nevertheless to deprive 
Englishmen of the security from arbitrary power, 
which is their birth right. 

" Upon perusal of former statutes it appears, 
that the members of both Houses have been 
frequently drawn to consent, not only to things 
prejudicial to the Commonwealth, but, (even in 
matters of greatest weight) to alter and contradict 
what formerly themselves had agreed to, and that, 
as it happened to please the fancy of the present 
Prince, or to suit the passions and interests of a 
prevailing faction. Witness the statute by which 
it was enacted that the proclamation of King 
Henry VIII. should be equivalent to an Act of 
Parliament ; another declaring both Mary and 
Elizabeth bastards ; and a third statute empower- 
ing the King to dispose of the Crown of England 
by will and testament. Add to these the several 
statutes in the times of King Henry VIII. Edward 
VI. Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, setting 
up and pulling down each other's religion, every 
one of them condemning even to death the profes- 
sion of the one before established. " — Royalist's 
Defence, p. 41. 

So far my anonymous author, evidently an old 
Tory lawyer of the genuine breed, too enlightened 
to obfuscate and incense-blacken the shrine, 
through which the kingly idea should be translu- 



IN RESPECT OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. Ill 

cent, into an idol to be worshipped in its own right ; 
but who, considering both the reigning Sovereign 
and the Houses, as limited and representative 
functionaries, thought he saw reason, in some few 
cases, to place more confidence in the former than 
in the latter ; while there were points, which he 
wished as little as possible to trust to either. With 
this experience, however, as above stated, (and it 
would not be difficult to increase the catalogue,) 
can we wonder that the nation grew sick of Par- 
liamentary religions ; — or that the idea should at 
last awake and become operative, that what virtually 
concerned their humanity and involved yet higher 
relations than those of the citizen to the State, 
duties more aweful, and more precious privileges, 
while yet it stood in closest connection with all 
their civil duties and rights, as their indispensable 
condition and only secure ground — that this was 
not a matter to be voted upjor down, off or on, by 
fluctuating majorities ; — that it was too precious an 
inheritance to be left at the discretion of an om- 
nipotency which had so little claim to omnis- 
cience ? No interest this of a single generation, 
but an entailed boon too sacred, too momentous, 
to be shaped and twisted, pared down or plumped 
up, by any assemblage of Lords, Knights, and 
Burgesses for the time being ; — men perfectly 
competent, it may be, to the protection and manage- 
ment of those interests in which, as having so 
large a stake, they may be reasonably presumed to 
feel a sincere and lively concern, but who, the ex- 



112 OBLIGATION OF THE CORONATION OATH 

perience of ages might teach us, are not the class 
of persons most likely to study or feel a deep con- 
cern in the interests here spoken of, in either sense 
of the term Church ; — that is, whether the interests 
be of a kingdom not of the world, or those of an 
estate of the realm, and a constituent part, there- 
fore, of the same system with the State, though as 
the opposite pole. The results at all events have 
been such, whenever the representatives of the one 
interest have assumed the direct control of the 
other, as gave occasion long ago to the rhyming 
couplet, quoted as proverbial by Luther : 

Cum mare siccatur, cum Damon ad astra levatur, 
Tunc clero laicusfidus amicus erit. 

But if the nation willed to withdraw the religion 
of the realm from the changes and revolutions in- 
cident to whatever is subjected to the suffrages of 
the representative assemblies, whether of the State 
or of the Church, the trustees of the Proprietage 
or those of the Nationalty, the first question is, 
how this reservation is to be declared and by what 
means to be effected. These means, the security 
for the permanence of the established religion, 
must, it may be foreseen, be imperfect ; for what 
can be otherwise that depends on human will ? 
but yet it may be abundantly sufficient to declare 
the aim and intention of the provision. Our 
ancestors did the best it was in their power to do. 
Knowing by recent experience that multitudes 
never blush, that numerous assemblies, however 



IN RESPECT TO THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 113 

respectably composed, are not exempt from tem- 
porary hallucinations and the influences of party 
passion ; that there are things, for the conservation 
of which — 



Men safelier trust to heaven, than to themselves, 
When least themselves, in storms of loud debate, 
Where folly is contagious, and too oft 
Even wise men leave their better sense at home 
To chide and wonder at them, when return'd.* 

Knowing this, our ancestors chose to place their 
reliance on the honour and conscience of an indi- 
vidual, whose comparative height, it was believed, 
would exempt him from the gusts and shifting 
currents that agitate the lower region of the poli- 
tical atmosphere. Accordingly, on a change of 
dynasty they bound the person, who had accepted 
the crown in trust, — bound him for himself and 
his successors by an oath to refuse his consent 
(without which no change in the existing law can 
be effected,) to any measure subverting or tending 
to subvert the safety and independence of the Na- 
tional Church, or which exposed the realm to the 
danger of a return of that foreign usurper, mis- 
named spiritual, from which it had with so many 
sacrifices emancipated itself. However uncon- 
stitutional therefore the royal veto on a Bill pre- 
sented by the Lords and Commons may be deemed 

* Poet. Works, Vol. h. p. 258.— Ed. 

1 



114 OBLIGATION OF THE CORONATION OATH 

in all ordinary cases, this is clearly an exception. 
For it is no additional power conferred on the 
King ; but a limit imposed on him by the consti- 
tution itself for its own safety. Previously to the 
ceremonial act, which announces him the only 
lawful and sovereign head of both the Church and 
the State, the oath is administered to him religiously 
as the representative person and crowned majesty 
of the nation. Religiously, I say ; — for the mind 
of the nation, existing only as an idea, can act 
distinguishably on the ideal powers alone — that is, 
on the reason and conscience. 

It only remains then to determine what it is to 
which the Coronation oath obliges the conscience 
of the King. And this may be best done by con- 
sidering what in reason and in conscience the 
nation had a right to impose. Now that the 
nation had a right to decide for the King's con- 
science and reason, and for the reason and con- 
science of all his successors, and of his and their 
counsellors and ministers, laic and ecclesiastic, 
on questions of theology, and controversies of 
faith, — for example, that it is not allowable in 
directing our thoughts to a departed Saint, the 
Virgin Mary for instance, to say Ora pro nobis, 
beata Virgo, though there might, peradventure, be 
no harm in saying, Ore t pro nobis, precor, beata 
Virgo ; whether certain books are to be holden 
canonical; whether the text, They shall be saved 
as through fire, refers to a purgatorial process in 
the body, or during the interval between its dis- 



IN RESPECT TO THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 115 

solution and the day of judgment ; whether the 
words, This is my body, are to be understood 
literally, and if so, whether it is by consubstan- 
tiation with, or transubstantiation of, bread and 
wine ; and that the members of both Houses of 
Parliament, together with the Privy Councillors 
and all the Clergy shall abjure and denounce the 
theory last mentioned — this I utterly deny. And 
if this were the whole and sole object and intention 
of the oath, however large the number might be of 
the persons who imposed or were notoriously fa- 
vourable to the imposition, so far from recognizing 
the nation in their collective number, I should 
regard them as no other than an aggregate of 
intolerant mortals, from bigotry and presumption 
forgetful of their fallibility, and not less ignorant 
of their own rights than callous to those of suc- 
ceeding generations. If the articles of faith 
therein disclaimed and denounced were the sub- 
stance and proper intention of the oath, and not to 
be understood, as in all common sense they ought 
to be, as temporary marks, because the known ac- 
companiments, of other and legitimate grounds of 
disqualification ; and which only in reference to 
these, and only as long as they implied their ex- 
istence, were fit objects of political interference ; 
it would be as impossible for me, as for the late 
Mr. Canning, to attach any such sanctity to the 
Coronation oath as should prevent it from being 
superannuated in times of clearer light and less 
heat. But that these theological articles, and the 



116 OBLIGATION OF THE CORONATION OATH. 

open profession of the same by a portion of the 
King's subjects as parts of their creed, are not the 
evils which it is the true and legitimate purpose of 
the oath to preclude, and which constitute and 
define its obligation on the royal conscience ; and 
what the real evils are, that do indeed disqualify 
for offices of national trust, and give the permanent 
obligatory character to the engagement — this, — 
in which I include the exposition of the essential 
characters of the Christian or Catholic Church ; 
and of a very different Church, which assumes the 
name ; and the application of the premisses to an 
appreciation on principle of the late Bill, now the 
law T of the land, — will occupy the remaining portion 
of the volume. 

And now I may be permitted to look back on 
the -road we have passed : in the course of which, 
1 have placed before the reader a small part indeed 
of what might, on a suitable occasion, be profitably 
said ; but it is all that for my present purpose I 
deem it necessary to say respecting three out of 
the five themes that were to form the subjects of 
the first part of this little work. But let me avail 
myself of the pause to repeat my apology to the 
reader for any extra trouble I may have imposed 
on him, by employing the same term, the State, 
in two senses ; though 1 flatter myself I have in 
each instance so guarded it as to leave scarcely the 
possibility that a moderately attentive reader should 
understand the word in one sense, when I had 
meant it in the other 2 or confound the State as a 



RECAPITULATION. 117 

whole and comprehending the Church, with the 
State as one of the two constituent parts, and in 
contradistinction from the Church. 



Brief Recapitulation. 

First then, I have given briefly but, I trust, 
with sufficient clearness, the right idea of a State, 
or body politic ; the word State being here synony- 
mous with a constituted realm, kingdom, common- 
wealth, or nation ; that is, where the integral parts, 
classes, or orders are so balanced, or interdependent, 
as to constitute, more or less, a moral unit, an or- 
ganic whole ; and as arising out of the idea of a 
State I have added the idea of a Constitution, as the 
informing principle of its coherence and unity. 
Bat in applying the above to our own kingdom 
(and with this qualification the reader is requested 
to understand me as speaking in all the following 
remarks), it was necessary to observe, and I 
willingly avail myself of this opportunity to repeat 
the observation, — that the Constitution, in its widest 
sense as the constitution of the realm, arose out of, 
and in fact consisted in, the co-existence of the 
constitutional State (in the second acceptation of 
the term) with the King as its head, and of the 
Church, that is, the National Church, with the 
King likewise as its head ; and lastly of the 
King, as the head and majesty of the whole nation. 
The reader was cautioned therefore not to confound 



118 R EC APITUL AT ION. 

it with either of its constituent parts ; that he 
must first master the true idea of each of these 
severally ; and that in the synopsis or conjunction 
of the three the idea of the English constitution, 
the constitution of the realm, will rise of itself 
before him. And in aid of this purpose and fol- 
lowing this order, I have given according to my 
best judgment, first, the idea of the State in the 
second or special sense of the term ; of the State- 
legislature ; and of the two constituent orders, 
the Landed, with its two classes, the Major Barons, 
and the Franklins ; and the Personal, consisting 
of the mercantile, or commercial, the manufac- 
turing, the distributive and the professional ; these 
two orders corresponding to the two great all-inclu- 
ding interests of theState, — the Landed, namely, to 
the permanence, — the Personal to the progression. 
The possessions of both orders, taken collectively, 
form the* Proprietage of the realm. In contradis- 
tinction from this and as my second theme, I have 
explained (and it being the principal object of this 
work, more diffusely) the Nationalty, its nature and 



* To convey his meaning precisely is a debt which an 
Author owes to his readers. He therefore who, to escape 
the charge of pedantry, will rather be misunderstood than 
startle a fastidious critic with an unusual term, may be com- 
pared to the man who should pay his creditor in base or 
counterfeit coin, when he had gold or silver ingots in his 
possession, to the precise amount of the debt ; and this under 
the pretence of their unshapeliness and want of the mint 
impression. 



RECAPITULATION. 119 

purposes, and the duties and qualifications of its 
trustees and functionaries. In the same sense in 
which I at once oppose and conjoin the Nationalty 
to the Proprietage ; in the same antithesis and 
conjunction I use and understand the phrase, 
Church and State. Lastly, I have essayed to 
determine the constitutional idea of the Crown, 
and its relations to the nation, to which I have 
added a few sentences on the relations of the nation 
to the State. 

To the completion of this first part of my under- 
taking", two subjects still remain to be treated of — 
and to each of these I shall devote a small section ; 
the title of the first being, M On the idea of 
the Christian Church ;" that of the other, " On a 
third Church :" the name of which I withhold for 
the present, in the expectation of deducing it by 
contrast from the contradistinguishing* characters 
of the former. 



IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 



" We, (said Luther), tell our Lord God plainly: If he 
will have his Church, then he must look how to maintain 
and defend it ; for we can neither uphold nor protect it. 
And well for us, that it is so ! For in case we could, or 
were able to defend it, we should become the proudest 
asses under heaven. Who is the Church's protector, that 
hath promised to be with her to the end, and the gates of 
hell shall not prevail against her ? Kings, Diets, Parlia- 
ments, Lawyers? Marry no such cattle." — Luther's Table 
Talk with additions, — Ed. 



IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

The practical conclusion from our inquiries respect- 
ing the origin and idea of the National Church, the 
paramount end and purpose of which is the con- 
tinued and progressive civilization of the commu- 
nity, (ernollit mores nee sinit esseferos), was this : 
that though many things may be conceived of a 
tendency to diminish the fitness of particular men, 
or of a particular class, to be chosen as trustees 
and functionaries of the same ; though there may 
be many points more or less adverse to the perfec- 
tion of the establishment; there are yet but two 
absolute disqualifications : namely, allegiance to 
a foreign power, or an acknowledgment of any 
other visible head of the Church but our sovereign 
lord the King ; and compulsory celibacy in con- 
nection with, and dependence on, a foreign and 
extra-national head. I now call the reader to a 
different contemplation, to the idea of the Christian 
Church. 

Of the Christian Church, I say, not of Chris- 
tianity. To the ascertainment and enucleation of the 
latter, of the great redemptive process which began 
in the separation of light from Chaos (Hades, or 



124 IDEA OF 

the indistinction), and has its end in the union of 
life with God, the whole summer and autumn and 
now commenced winter of my life have been dedi- 
cated. Hie labor, hoc opus est, on which alone 
I rest my hope that I shall be found not to have 
lived altogether in vain. Of the Christian Church 
only, and of this no further than is necessary for 
the distinct understanding of the National Church, 
it is my purpose now to speak : and for this pur- 
pose it will be sufficient to enumerate the essential 
characters by which the Christian Church is dis- 
tinguished. 

I. — The Christian Church is not a kingdom, 
realm, (royaume), or state, (sensu latiori) of 
the world, that is, of the aggregate or total number 
of the kingdoms, states, realms, or bodies politic, 
(these words being, as far as the present argument 
is concerned, perfectly synonymous), into which ci- 
vilized man is distributed ; and which, collectively 
taken, constitute the civilized world. The Chris- 
tian Church, I say, is no state, kingdom, or realm 
of this w r orld ; nor is it an estate of any such realm, 
kingdom or state ; but it is the appointed opposite to 
them all collectively — the sustaining, correcting, be- 
friending opposite of the World; the compensating 
counterforce to the inherent* and inevitable evils 

* It is not without pain that I have advanced this posi- 
tion, without the accompanying proofs and documents which 
it may be thought to require, and without the elucidations 
which T am sure it deserves ; but which are precluded alike 
by the purpose and the limits of the present work. I will, 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 125 

and defects of the 'State, as a State, and without 
reference to its better or worse construction as a 
particular state ; while whatever is beneficent and 
humanizing in the aims, tendencies, and proper ob- 
jects of the State, the Christian Church collects in 
itself as in a, focus, to radiate them back in a higher 
quality; or to change the metaphor, it completes and 
strengthens the edifice of the State, without interfer- 
ence or commixture, in the mere act of laying and 
securing its own foundations. And for these services 
the Church of Christ asks of the State neither 
wages nor dignities. She asks only protection 
and to be let alone. These indeed she demands; 
but even these only on the ground that there is no- 
thing in her constitution or in her discipline incon- 
sistent with the interests of the State, nothing re- 
sistant or impedimental to the State in the exercise 
of its rightful powers, in the fulfilment of its ap- 
propriate duties, or in the effectuation of its legi- 
timate objects. It is a fundamental principle of 
all legislation, that the State shall leave the largest 
portion of personal free agency to each of its citi- 
zens, that is compatible with the free agency of all, 

however, take this opportunity of earnestly recommending to 
such of my readers as understand German, Lessing's E-nist 
und Falk : Gespr'dche fur Freym'tiurer. They will find it in 
Vol. vii. of the Leipsic edition of Lessing's Works. I know 
no finer example of the point, elegance, and exquisite, yet 
effortless, precision and conciseness of Lessing's philosophic 
and controversial writings. 1 remember nothing that is at 
once like them, and equal to them ,but the Provincial Letters 
of Pascal. 



126 IDEA OF 

and not subversive of the ends of its own existence 
as a state. And though a negative, it is a most 
important distinctive, character of the Church of 
Christ, that she asks nothing for her members as 
Christians, which they are not already entitled to 
demand as citizens and subjects. 

II. — The Christian Church is not a secret com- 
munity. In the once current (and well worthy to 
be re-issued) terminology of our elder divines, it 
is objective in its nature and purpose, not mystic 
or subjective, that is, not like reason or the court 
of conscience, existing only in and for the indivi- 
dual. Consequently the Church here spoken of 
is not the kingdom of God which is within, and 
which cometh not with observation* but is most 
observable, — a city built on a hill, and not to be 
hid — an institution consisting of visible and public 
communities. In one sentence it is the Church 
visible and militant under Christ. And this visi- 
bility, this publicity, is its second distinctive cha- 
racter. 

III. — The third character reconciles the two pre- 
ceding and gives the condition, under which their 
co-existence in the same subject becomes possible. 
Antagonist forces are necessarily of the same kind. 
It is an old rule of logic, that only concerning two 
subjects of the same kind can it be properly said 
that they are opposites. Inter res heterogeneas 
non datur oppositio ; that is, contraries cannot be 

* Luke xvii. 21—20. See ib. xxi. 28. 31.— Ed. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 127 

opposites. Alike in the primary and the metaphorical 
use of the word, rivals (rivales) are those only who 
inhabit the opposite banks of the same stream. 

Now, in conformity to the first character, the 
Christian Church is not to be considered as a coun- 
terpole to any particular State, the word being" here 
taken in the largest sense. Still less can it, like 
the National Clerisy, be opposed to the State in the 
narrower sense. The Christian Church, as such, 
has no Nationalty entrusted to its charge. It 
forms no counter-balance to the collective Heritage 
of the realm. The phrase, Church and State, has 
a sense and a propriety in reference to the National 
Church alone. The Church of Christ cannot be 
placed in this conjunction and antithesis without 
forfeiting* the very name of Christian. The true 
and only contra-position of the Christian Church is 
to the World. Her paramount aim and object, in- 
deed, is another world, not a world to come exclu- 
sively, but likewise another world that now is,* and 
to the concerns of which alone the epithet spiritual 
can, without a mischievous abuse of the word, be 
applied. But as the necessary consequence and 
accompaniments of the means by which she seeks 
to attain this especial end, and as a collateral ob- 
ject, it is her office to counteract the evils that re- 
sult by a common necessity from all bodies politic, 
the system or aggregate of which is the world. 
And observe that the nisus, or counter-agency, of 

* See Appendix to this Treatise. — Ed. 



128 IDEA OF 

the Christian Church is against the evil results 
only, and not (directly, at least, or by primary in- 
tention) against the defective institutions that may 
have caused or aggravated them. 

But on the other hand, by virtue of the second 
character, the Christian Church is to exist in every 
kingdom and state of the world, in the form of 
public communities, and is to exist as a real and 
ostensible power. The consistency of the first and 
second character depends on, and is fully effected 
by, the third character of the Church of Christ ; 
namely, — 

The absence of any visible head or sovereign, 
and by the non-existence, nay the utter preclu- 
sion, of any local or personal centre of unity, of 
any single source of universal power. This fact 
may be thus illustrated. Kepler and Newton, sub- 
stituting the idea of the infinite for the conception 
of a finite and determined world, assumed in the 
Ptolemaic astronomy, superseded and drove out 
the notion of a one central point or body of the 
universe. Finding a centre in every point of matter 
and an absolute circumference no where, they ex- 
plained at once the unity and the distinction that 
co-exist throughout the creation by focal instead 
of central bodies : the attractive and restraining 
power of the sun or focal orb, in each particular 
system, supposing and resulting from an actual 
power, present in all and over all, throughout an 
indeterminable multitude of systems. And this, 
demonstrated as it has been by science, and verified 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 129 

by observation, we rightly name the true system 
of the heavens. And even such is the scheme and 
true idea of the Christian Church. In the primi- 
tive times, and as long as the churches retained 
the form given them by the Apostles and Apostolic 
men, every community, or in the words of a Father 
of the second century, (for the pernicious fashion 
of assimilating the Christian to the Jewish, as 
afterwards to the Pagan, ritual by false analogies 
was almost coeval with the Church itself,) every 
altar had its own bishop, every flock its own pastor, 
who derived his authority immediately from Christ, 
the universal Shepherd, and acknowledged no 
other superior than the same Christ, speaking by 
his spirit in the unanimous decision of any number 
of bishops or elders, according to his promise, 
Where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them* 

* Questions of dogmatic divinity do not enter into the 
purpose of this work ; and I am even anxious not to give it 
a theological character. It is, however, within the scope of 
my argument to observe that, as may be incontrovertiblv 
proved by other equivalent declarations of our Lord, this 
promise is not confined to houses of worship and prayer- 
meetings exclusively. And though I cannot offer the same 
justification for what follows, yet the interest and importance 
of the subject will, I trust, excuse me if I remark that, even 
in reference to meetings for divine worship, the true import 
of these gracious, soul-awing, words is too generally over- 
looked. It is not the comments or harangues of unlearned 
and fanatical preachers that I have in my mind, but sermons 
of great and deserved celebrity, and divines whose learning, 
well-regulated zeal, and sound Scriptural views are as ho- 
lt 



130 IDEA OF 

Hence the unitive relation of the churches to 
each other, and of each to all, being equally actual 



nourable to the Church, as their piety, beneficence, and 
blameless life, are to the Christian name, when I say that 
passages occur which might almost lead one to conjecture 
that the authors had found the words, " 1 will come and join 
you/' instead of, I am in the midst of you, — passages from 
which it is at least difficult not to infer that they had inter- 
preted the promise, as of a corporal co-presence, instead of 
a spiritual immanence (orifisvsi kv rjfjiiv) as of an individual 
coming in or down, and taking a place, as soon as the required 
number of petitioners was completed ; as if, in short, this pre- 
sence, this actuation of the I AM, (tfyu sv fiEffyavrCjv) were 
an after-consequence, an accidental and separate result and 
reward of the contemporaneous and contiguous worshipping 
— and not the total act itself, of which the spiritual Christ, 
one and the same in all the faithful, is the originating and per- 
fective focal unity. Even as the physical life is in each limb 
and organ of the body, all in every part ; but is manifested as 
life, by being one in all and thus making all one : even so with 
Christ, our spiritual life. He is in each true believer, in his 
solitary prayer and during his silent communion in the 
watches of the night, no less than in the congregation of the 
faithful ; but he manifests his indwelling presence more cha- 
racteristically, with especial evidence, when many, convened 
in his name, whether for prayer or for council, do through 
him become one. 

I would that these preceding observations were as little 
connected with the main subject of this volume, as to some 
they w r ill appear to be. But as the mistaking of symbols 
and analogies for metaphors has been a main occasion and 
support of the worst errors in Protestantism ; so the under- 
standing the same symbols in a literal or phenomenal sense, 
notwithstanding the most earnest warnings against it, the 
most express declarations of the folly and danger of inter- 
preting sensually what was delivered of objects super- 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 131 

indeed, but likewise equally ideal, that is, mystic 
and supersensual, as the relation of the whole 



sensual — this was the rank wilding, on which the prince of 
this world, the lust of power and worldly aggrandizement, 
was enabled to graft, one by one, the whole branchery of 
Papal superstition and imposture. A truth not less im- 
portant might be conveyed by reversing the image ; — by 
representing the Papal monarchy as the stem or trunk cir- 
culating a poison-snap through the branches successively 
grafted thereon, the previous and natural fruit of which was 
at worst only mawkish and innutritious. Yet among the 
dogmas or articles of belief that contra-distinguish the Roman 
from the Reformed Churches, the most important and, in 
their practical effects and consequences, the most pernicious 
I cannot but regard as refracted and distorted truths, pro- 
found ideas sensualized into idols, or at the lowest rate lofty 
and affecting imaginations, safe while they remained general 
and indefinite, but debased and rendered noxious by their 
application in detail : for example, the doctrine of the Com- 
munion of Saints, or the sympathy between all the members 
of the universal Church, which death itself doth not interrupt, 
exemplified in St. Anthony and the cure of sore eyes, St. 
Boniface and success in brewing, and other such follies. 
What the same doctrines now are, used as the pretexts and 
shaped into the means and implements of priestly power and 
revenue : orrather, what the whole scheme is of Romish rites, 
doctrines, institutions, and practices in their combined and 
full operation, where it exists in undisputed sovereignty, 
neither repressed by the prevalence, nor modified by the 
light, of a purer faith, nor holden in check by the consci- 
ousness of Protestant neighbours and lookers-on ; — this is 
a question which cannot be kept too distinct from the former. 
And, as at the risk of passing for a secret favourer of super- 
annuated superstitions, I have spoken out my thoughts of 
the Roman theology, so, and at a far more serious risk of 
being denounced as an intolerant bigot, I will declare what, 



132 IDEA OF 

Church to its one invisible Head, the Church 
with and under Christ, as a one kingdom or state, 



after a two years' residence in exclusively Popish countries, 
and in situations and under circumstances that afforded more 
than ordinary means of acquainting myself with the working's 
and the proceeds of the machinery, was the impression left 
on my mind as to the effects and influences of the Romish 
(most un-Catholic) religion, — not as even according to its 
own canons and authorized decisions it ought to be ; but, 
as it actually and practically exists. This impression, and 
the convictions grounded thereon, which have assuredly not 
been weakened by the perusal of Mr. Blanco White's most 
affecting statements, and by the recent history of Spain and 
Portugal, I cannot convey more satisfactorily to myself than 
by repeating the answer, which I long since returned to the 
same question put by a friend, that is to say, — 

When I contemplate the whole system, as it affects the 
great fundamental principles of morality, the terra firma, as 
it were, of our humanity ; then trace its operation on the 
sources and conditions of national strength and well-being ; 
and lastly, consider its woeful influences on the innocence 
and sanctity of the female mind and imagination, on the faith 
and happiness, the gentle fragrancy and unnoticed ever- 
present verdure of domestic life, — I can with difficulty avoid 
applying to it what the Rabbins fable of the fratricide Cain, 
after the curse : that the firm earth trembled wherever he strode , 
and the grass turned black beneath his feet. 

Indeed, if my memory does not cheat me, some of the 
mystic divines, in their fond humour of allegorizing, tell us 
that in Gen, iv. 3—8. is correctly narrated the history of the 
first apostate Church, that began by sacrificing amiss, impro- 
priating the fruit of the ground or temporal possessions under 
spiritual pretexts ; and ended in slaying the shepherd bro- 
ther who brought the firstlings of his fold, holy and without 
blemish, to the Great Shepherd, and presented them as nevj 
creatures, before the Lord and Owner of the flocks. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 133 

is hidden : while in all its several component 
monads, (the particular visible churches I mean,) 
Caesar receiving the things that are Caesar's, and 
confronted by no rival Caesar, by no authority, 
which existing locally, temporally, and in the 
person of a fellow mortal, must be essentially of 
the same kind with his own, notwithstanding any 
attempt to belie its true nature under the perverted 
and contradictory name of spiritual, sees only so 
many loyal groups, who, claiming no peculiar 
rights, make themselves known to him as Chris- 
tians, only by the more scrupulous and exemplary 
performance of their duties as citizens and subjects. 
And here let me add a few sentences on the use, 
abuse, and misuse of the phrase, spiritual power. 
In the only appropriate sense of the words, spiri- 
tual power is a power that acts on the spirits of 
men. Now the spirit of a man, or the spiritual 
part of our being, is the intelligent will : or (to 
speak less abstractly) it is the capability, with 
which the Father of Spirits hath endowed man of 
being determined to action by the ultimate ends, 
which the reason alone can present. The under- 
standing, which derives all its materials from the 
senses, can dictate purposes only, that is, such 
ends as are in their turn means to other ends. The 
ultimate ends, by which the will is to be deter- 
mined, and by which alone the will, not corrupted, 
the spirit made perfect, would be determined, are 
called, in relation to the reason, moral ideas. Such 
are the ideas of the eternal, the good, the true, the 



134 IDEA OF 

holy, the idea of God as the absoluteness and re- 
ality (or real ground) of all these, or as the Supreme 
Spirit in which all these substantially are, and are 
one : lastly, the idea of the responsible will itself; 
of duty, of guilt, or evil in itself without reference 
to its outward and separable consequences. 

A power, therefore, that acts on the appetites 
and passions, which we possess in common with 
the beasts, by motives derived from the senses and 
sensations has no pretence to the name ; nor can 
it without the grossest abuse of the word be called 
a spiritual power. Whether the man expects the 
auto de fe, the fire and faggots, with which he is 
threatened, to take place at Lisbon or Smithfield, 
or in some dungeon in the centre of the earth, 
makes no difference in the kind of motive by which 
he is influenced ; nor of course in the nature of 
the power which acts on his passions by means of 
it. It would be strange indeed if ignorance and 
superstition, the dense and rank fogs that most 
strangle and suffocate the light of the spirit in man, 
should constitute a spirituality in the power which 
takes advantage of them ! 

This is a gross abuse of the term, spiritual. The 
following, sanctioned as it is by custom and sta- 
tute, yet (speaking exclusively as a philologist and 
without questioning its legality) I venture to point 
out as a misuse of the term. Our great Church 
dignitaries sit in the Upper House of the Convo- 
cation as Prelates of the National Church : and as 
Prelates may exercise ecclesiastical power. In 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 135 

the House of Lords they sit as Barons and by 
virtue of the baronies which, much against the will 
of those haughty prelates, our Kings forced upon 
them : and as such, they exercise a Parliamentary 
power. As Bishops of the Church of Christ only 
can they possess, or exercise (and God forbid ! I 
should doubt, that as such, many of them do faith- 
fully exercise) a spiritual power, which neither 
King can give, nor King and Parliament take 
away. As Christian Bishops, they are spiritual 
pastors, by power of the spirits ruling the flocks 
committed to their charge ; but they are temporal 
Peers and Prelates. 

The Fourth Character of the Christian Church, 
and a necessary consequence of the first and third, 
is its universality. It is neither Anglican, Gal- 
lican, nor Roman, neither Latin nor Greek. Even 
the Catholic and Apostolic Church of England is 
a less safe expression than the Church of Christ 
in England : though the Catholic Church in 
England, or (what would be still better,) the Ca- 
tholic Church under Christ throughout Great Bri- 
tain and Ireland is justifiable and appropriate : for 
through the presence of its only Head and Sove- 
reign, entire in each and one in all, the Church 
Universal is spiritually perfect in every true 
Church, and of course in any number of such 
Churches, of which from circumstance of place, or 
the community of country or of language, we have 
occasion to speak collectively. I have already, 
here and elsewhere, observed, and scarcely a day 



136 IDEA OF 

passes without some occasion to repeat the obser- 
vation, that an equivocal term, or a word with two 
or more different meanings, is never quite harm- 
less. Thus, it is at least an inconvenience in our 
language that the term church, instead of being 
confined to its proper sense, kirk, cedes Kyriacce, 
or the Lord's house, should likewise be the w r ord 
by which our forefathers rendered the Ecclesia, or 
the eKKkrjroi, or evocati, the called out of the world, 
named collectively ; and likewise our term for the 
clerical establishment. To the Called at Rome — 
to the Church of Christ at Corinth, or in Philippi 
— such was the language of the Apostolic age ; and 
the change since then has been no improvement. 
The true Church of England is the National Church 
or Clerisy. There exists, God be thanked ! a Ca- 
tholic and Apostolic Church in England : and I 
thank God also for the constitutional and ancestral 
Church of England. 

These are the four distinctions, or peculiar and 
essential marks, by which the Church with Christ 
as its head is distinguished from the National 
Church, and separated from every possible coun- 
terfeit, that has, or shall have, usurped its name. 
And as an important comment on the same, and in 
confirmation of the principle which I have attempted 
to establish, I earnestly recommend for the reader's 
perusal the following transcript from Henry More's 
Modest Inquiry, or True Idea of Antichristianism. 

" We will suppose some one prelate, who had 
got the start of the rest, to put in for the title and 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 137 

authority of Universal Bishop : and for the obtain- 
ing of this sovereignty, he will first pretend that 
it is unfit that the visible Catholic Church, being 
one, should not be united under one visible head, 
which reasoning, though it makes a pretty shew 
at first sight, will yet, being closely looked into, 
vanish into smoke. For this is but a quaint con- 
cinnity urged in behalf of an impossibility. For 
the erecting such an office for one man, which no 
one man in the world is able to perforin, implies 
that to be possible which is indeed impossible. 
Whence it is plain that the head will be too little 
for the body ; which therefore will be a piece of 
mischievous asymmetry or inconcinnity also. No 
one mortal can be a competent head for that 
Church which has a right to be Catholic, and to 
overspread the face of the whole earth. There can 
be no such head, but Christ, who is not mere man, 
but God in the Divine humanity, and therefore 
present with every part of the Church, and every 
member thereof, at what distance soever. But to 
set some one mortal Bishop over the whole Church, 
were to suppose that great Bishop of our spirit ab- 
sent from it, who has promised that he will be with 
her to the end of the world. Nor does the Church 
Catholic on earth lose her unity thereby. For ra- 
ther hereby only is or can she be one.* 

* As rationally might it be pretended that it is not the 
life, the rector spiritus prcesens per totum et in omni parte, but 
the crown of the skull, or some one convolute of the brain, 
that causes and preserves the unity of the bodv natural. 



138 IDEA OF 

" Such and so futile is the first pretence. But if 
this will not serve the turn, there is another in 
reserve. And notwithstanding* the demonstrated 
impossibility of the thing, still there must be one 
visible head of the Church universal, the successor 
and vicar of Christ, for the slaking of controver- 
sies, for the determination of disputed points ! 
We will not stop here to expose the weakness of 
the argument (not alas ! peculiar to the sophists 
of Rome, nor employed in support of Papal infal- 
libility only), that this or that must be, and con- 
sequently is, because sundry inconveniences would 
result from the want of it ; and this without con- 
sidering whether these inconveniences have been 
prevented or removed by its alleged presence ; 
whether they do not continue in spite of this pre- 
tended remedy or antidote ; whether these incon- 
veniences were intended by Providence to be pre- 
cluded, and not rather for wise purposes permitted 
to continue ; and lastly, whether the remedy may 
not be worse than the disease, like the sugar of 
lead administered by the empiric, who cured a fever 
fit by exchanging it for the dead palsy. Passing 
by this sophism, therefore, it is sufficient to reply 
that all points necessary are so plain and so widely 
known, that it is impossible that a Christian, who 
seeks those aids which the true Head of the Church 
has promised shall never be sought in vain, should 
err therein from lack of knowing better. And 
those who, from defects of head or heart, are blind 
to this widely diffused light, and who neither seek 
nor wish those aids, are still less likely to be in- 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 139 

fluenced by a minor and derivative authority. But 
for other things, whether ceremonies or conceits, 
whether matters of discipline or of opinion, their 
diversity does not at all break the unity of the out- 
ward and visible Church, as long as they do not 
subvert the fundamental laws of Christ's kingdom 
nor contradict the terms of admission into his 
Church, nor contravene the essential characters 
by which it subsists and is distinguished as the 
Christian Catholic Church." 

To these sentiments, borrowed from one of the 
most philosophical of our learned elder divines, I 
have only to add an observation as suggested by 
them ; — that as many and fearful mischiefs have 
ensued from the confusion of the Christian with 
the National Church, so have many and grievous 
practical errors, and much un-Christian intolerance, 
arisen from confounding the outward and visible 
Church of Christ with the spiritual and invisible 
Church, known only to the Father of all Spirits. 
The perfection of the former is to afford every op- 
portunity, and to present no obstacle, to a gradual 
advancement of the latter. The different degrees 
of progress, the imperfections, errors and accidents 
of false perspective, which lessen indeed with our 
advance — our spiritual advance — but to a greater 
or lesser amount are inseparable from all progres- 
sion ; these, the interpolated half-truths of the 
twilight, through which every soul must pass from 
darkness to the spiritual sunrise, belong to the 
visible Church as objects of hope, patience, and 
charity alone. 



ON THE 

THIRD POSSIBLE CHURCH, 



OR THE 



CHURCH OF ANTICHRIST, 



Ecclesia Cattolica non, ma il Papismo denunciamo, perche 
mggerito dal biter esse, perche for tificato dalla menzogna, percht 
radicato dal piu abbominevole despotismo, perche cantrario al di- 
ritto e ai titoli incommunicabili di Cristo, ed alia iranqtiillita 
d'ogni Chiesa e d'ogni Stato. — Spanzotti. 



Thus, on the depluming of the Pope, every bird had his 
own feather : in the partage whereof, what he had gotten by 
sacrilege, was restored to Christ ; what by usurpation, was 
given to the King, the (National) Church and the State ; 
what by oppression, was remitted to each particular Chris- 
tian. — Fuller's Church History of Britain, Book v. 



143 



ON THE CHURCH, 

NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 

If our forefathers were annoyed with the cant of 
over-boiling* zeal, arising- out of the belief, that the 
Pope is Antichrist, and likewise (sexu mutato) 
the Harlot of Babylon : we are more endangered 
by the twaddle of humid charity, which (some 
years ago at least) used to drizzle, a something 
between mist and small rain, from the higher re- 
gion of our Church atmosphere. It was sanctioned, 
I mean, both in the pulpit and the senate by sun- 
dry dignitaries, whose horror of Jacobinism during 
the then panic of property led them to adopt the 
principles and language of Laud and his faction. 
And once more the Church of Rome, in contrast 
with Protestant dissenters, became " a right dear, 
though erring sister." And the heaviest charge 
against the Romish Pontificate was, that the Italian 
politics and nepotism of a series of Popes had 
converted so great a good into an intolerable 
grievance. We were reminded that Grotius and 
Leibnitz had regarded a visible head of the Catho- 
lic Church as most desirable ; that they, and with 
them more than one Primate of our own Church, 
yearned for a conciliating settlement of the differ- 



144 ON THE CHURCH, 

ences between the Romish and Protestant Churches; 
and mainly in order that there might exist really, 
as well as nominally, a visible head of the Church 
Universal, a fixt centre of unity. Of course the 
tenet that the Pope was in any sense the Anti- 
christ predicted by Paul was decried as fanatical 
and Puritanical cant. 

Now it is a duty of Christian charity to presume 
that the men, who in the present day employ this 
language, are, or believe themselves to be, Chris- 
tians ; and that they do not privately think that 
St. Paul, in the two celebrated passages of his First 
and Second Epistles to the Church at Thessalo- 
nica, (1. iv., 13 — 18 ; 11. ii. 1 — 12), practised a ruse 
de guerre, and meant only by throwing the fulfil- 
ment beyond the life of the present generation, 
and by a terrific detail of the horrors and calami- 
ties that were to precede it, to damp the impa- 
tience, and silence the objections, excited by the ex- 
pectation and the delay of our Lord's personal re -ap- 
pearance. Again : as the persons, of whom I have 
been speaking, are well educated men and men of 
sober minds, it may be safely taken for granted 
that they do not understand by Antichrist any 
nondescript monster, or suppose it to be the pro- 
per name or designation of some one individual 
man or devil exclusively. The Christians of the 
second century, sharing in a delusion that prevailed 
over the whole Roman Empire, believed that 
Nero would come to life again, and be Antichrist : 
and I have been informed that a learned clergy- 



NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 145 

man of our own times, endowed with the gift of 
prophecy by assiduous study of the Book of Daniel 
and the Apocalypse, asserts the same thing* of 
Napoleon Buonaparte. 

But, as before said, it would be calumnious to 
attribute such pitiable fanaticism to the parties 
here in question. And to them T venture to affirm 
that if by Antichrist be meant — what alone can 
rationally be meant — a power in the Christian 
Church, which in the name of Christ, and at once 
pretending and usurping his authority, is systema- 
tically subversive of the essential and distinguish- 
ing characters and purposes of the Christian 
Church : then, if the Papacy, and the Romish 
hierarchy as far as it is Papal, be not Antichrist, 
the guilt of schism in its most aggravated form 
lies on the authors of the Reformation. For no- 
thing less than this could have justified so tre- 
mendous a rent in the Catholic Church with all its 
foreseen most calamitous consequences. And so 
Luther himself thought ; and so thought Wicliff be- 
fore him. Only in the conviction that Christianity 
itself was at stake, — that the cause was that of 
Christ in conflict with Antichrist, — could, or did, 
even the lion-hearted Luther with unquailed spirit 
avow to himself; — I bring not peace, but a sword 
into the world. 

It is my full conviction, a conviction formed 
after a long and patient study of the subject in 
detail ;— and if in support of this competence I 
only add that I have read, and with care, the 

L 



146 ON THE CHURCH 

Summa Theologice of Aquinas, and compared the 
system with the statements of Arnauld and Bossuet, 
the number of those who in the present much- 
reading, but not very hard-reading, age would 
feel themselves entitled to dispute my claim, will 
not, perhaps, be very formidable ; — it is, I repeat, 
my full conviction that the rights and doctrines, 
the agenda et credenda, of the Roman Catholics, 
could we separate them from the adulterating in- 
gredients combined with, and the use made of, 
them by the sacerdotal Mamelukes of the Romish 
monarchy, for the support of the Papacy and Pa- 
pal hierarchy, would neither have brought about, 
nor have sufficed to justify, the convulsive separa- 
tion under Leo X. Nay, that if they were fairly, 
and in the light of a sound philosophy, compared 
with either of the two main divisions of Protestan- 
tism, as it now exists in this country, that is, with 
the fashionable doctrines and interpretations of the 
Arminian and Grotian school on the one hand, and 
with the tenets and language of the modern Cal- 
vinists on the other, an enlightened disciple of 
John and of Paul would be perplexed which of 
the three to prefer as the least unlike the profound 
and sublime system he had learned from his great 
masters. And in this comparison I leave out of 
view the extreme sects of Protestantism, whether 
of the frigid or of the torrid zone, Socinian or 
fanatic. 

During the summer of last year, I made the 
tour of Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine as 



I 



NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 147 

far as Bergen, and among the few notes then 
taken, I find the following: — " Every fresh op- 
portunity of examining the Roman Catholic reli- 
gion on the spot, every new fact that presents it- 
self to my notice, increases my conviction that its 
immediate basis and the true grounds of its con- 
tinuance are to he found in the wickedness, igno- 
rance, and wretchedness of the many ; and that 
the producing and continuing cause of this deplo- 
rable state is, that it is the interest of the Romish 
priesthood that so it should remain, as the surest, 
and, in fact, only support of the Papal sovereignty 
and influence against the civil powers, and the re- 
forms wished for by the more enlightened govern- 
ments, as well as by all the better informed and 
wealthier class of Roman Catholics generally. 
And as parts of the same policy, and equally in- 
dispensable to the interests of the Papal Crown, 
are the ignorance, grossness, excessive number 
and poverty of the lower ecclesiastics themselves, 
the religious orders included. When I say the 
Pope, I understand the Papal hierarchy, which is, 
in truth, the dilated Pope : and in this sense only, 
and not of the individual priest or friar at Rome, 
can a wise man be supposed to use the word." — 
Cologne, July 2, 1828. 

I feel it as no small comfort and confirmation to 
know that the same view of the subject is taken, 
the same conviction entertained, by a large and 
increasing number in the Roman Catholic com- 
munion itself, in Germany, France, Italy, and 



148 ON THE CHURCH 

even in Spain ; and that no inconsiderable portion 
of this number consists of men who are not only- 
pious as Christians, but zealous as Roman Catho- 
lics ; and who would contemplate with as much 
horror a reform from their Church, as thev look 
with earnest aspirations and desires towards a re- 
form in the Church. Proof of this may be found 
in the learned work intituled Disordini morali e 
politici delta Corte di Roma — evidently the work 
of a zealous Romanist and from the ecclesiastical 
erudition displayed in the volumes, probably a priest. 
Nay, from the angry aversion with which the foul 
heresies of those sons of perdition, Luther and Cal- 
vin, are mentioned, and his very faint and qualified 
censure of the persecution of the Albigenses and 
Waldenses, I am obliged to infer that the writer's 
attachment to his communion was zealous even to 
bigotry. 

The disorders denounced by him are : — 

1. The pretension of the Papacy to temporal 
power and sovereignty, directly or as the pretended 
consequence of spiritual dominion ; and as furnish- 
ing occasion to this, even the retention of the pri- 
macy in honour over all other Bishops, after Rome 
had ceased to be the metropolis of Christendom, is 
noticed as a subject of regret. 

2. The boast of Papal infallibility. 

3. The derivation of the Episcopal power from 
the Papal, and the dependence of Bishops on the 
Pope, rightly named the evil of a false centre. 

4. The right of exercising authority in other 
dioceses besides that of Rome. 



NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 149 

5. The privilege of reserving to himself the 
greater causes — le cause maggiori. 

6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Of conferring any and every 
benefice in the territory of other Bishops ; of ex- 
acting the Annates, or First Fruits ; of receiving- 
appeals ; with the power of subjecting all churches 
in all parts, to the ecclesiastical discipline of the 
church of Rome ; and lastly, the dispensing power 
of the Pope. 

11. The Pope's pretended superiority to an Ecu- 
menical Council. 

12. The exclusive power of canonizing Saints. 
Now, of the twelve abuses here enumerated, it 

is remarkable that ten, if not eleven, are but ex- 
pansions of the one grievance — the Papal power 
as the centre, and the Pope as the one visible head 
and sovereign of the Christian Church. 

The writer next enumerates the personal instru- 
ments of these abuses : — 1. The Cardinals. 2. 
The excessive number of the priests and other 
ecclesiastics. 3. The Regulars, Mendicant Or- 
ders, Jesuits, and the rest. Lastly, the means em- 
ployed by the Papacy to found and preserve its 
usurped power, namely : — 

1. The institution of a Chair of Canon Law, in 
the University of Bologna, the introduction of 
Gratian's Canons, and the forged decisions. 2. 
The prohibition of books, wherever published. 3. 
The Inquisition ; and 4. The tremendous power of 
excommunication ; — the last two in their temporal 
inflictions and consequences equalling, or rather 
greatly exceeding, the utmost extent of the puni- 



150 ON THE CHURCH 

tive power exercised by the temporal sovereign and 
the civil magistrate, armed with the sword of the 
criminal law. 

It is observable that the most efficient of all the 
means adopted by the Roman Pontiffs, namely, 
the celibacy of the clergy, is omitted by this wri- 
ter ;— a sufficient proof that he was neither a Pro- 
testant nor a philosopher, which in the Italian 
states, and, indeed, in most Romish Catholic coun- 
tries, is the name of courtesy for an infidel. 

One other remark in justification of the tenet 
avowed in this chapter, and I shall have said all I 
deem it necessary to say on the third form of a 
Church. That erection of a temporal monarch 
under the pretence of a spiritual authority, which 
was not possible in Christendom but by the extinc- 
tion or enhancement of the spirit of Christianity, 
and which has therefore been only partially attained 
by the Papacy — this was effected in full by Mo- 
hammed, to the establishment of the most extensive 
and complete despotism, that ever warred against 
civilization and the interests of humanity. And had 
Mohammed retained the name of Christianity, had 
he deduced his authority from Christ as his prin- 
cipal, and described his own Khalifate and that of 
his successors as vicarious, there can be no doubt 
that to the Mussulman theocracy, embodied in the 
different Mohammedan dynasties, would belong the 
name and attributes of Antichrist. But the Pro- 
phet of Arabia started out of Paganism an unbap- 
tized Pagan. He was no traitor in the Church, 
but an enemy from without, who levied war against 



NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 151 

its outward and formal existence, and is, therefore, 
not chargeable with apostasy from a faith which 
he had never acknowledged, or from a Church to 
which he had never appertained. Neither in the 
Prophet nor in his system, therefore, can we find 
the predicted Antichrist, that is, a usurped power 
in the Church itself, which, in the name of Christ, 
and pretending his authority, systematically sub- 
verts or counteracts the peculiar aims and purposes 
of Christ's mission ; and which, vesting in a mortal 
his incommunicable headship, destroys and ex- 
changes for the contrary the essential contra-dis- 
tinguishing marks or characters of his kingdom 
on earth. But apply it, as Wicliff, Luther,* and 
indeed all the first Reformers did to the Papacy, 
and Papal hierarchy ; and we understand at once 

* And (be it observed) without any reference to the 
Apocalypse, the canonical character of which Luther at first 
rejected, and never cordially received. And without the 
least sympathy with Luther's suspicions on this head, hut 
on the contrary receiving this sublime poem as the undoubted 
work of the Apostolic age, and admiring in it the most per- 
fect specimen of symbolic poetry, I am as little disposed to 
cite it on the present occasion ; — convinced as I am and hope 
shortly to convince others, that in the whole series of its 
magnificent imagery there is not a single symbol, that can 
be even plausibly interpreted of either the Pope, the Turks, 
or Napoleon Buonaparte. Of charges not attaching to the 
moral character, there are few, if anv, that I should be more 
anxious to avoid than that of being an affecter of paradoxes. 
But the dread of other men's thoughts shall not tempt me to 
withhold a truth, which the strange errors grounded on the 
contrary assumption render important. And in the thorough 
assurance of its truth I make the assertion, that the per- 



152 ON THE CHURCH 

the grounds of the great Apostle's premonition, 
that this Antichrist could not appear till after the 



spicuity, and (with singularly few exceptions even for us) 
the uniform intelligibility, and close consecutive meaning, 
verse by verse, with the simplicity and grandeur of the plan, 
and the admirable ordonnance of the parts, are among the 
prominent beauties of the Apocalypse. Nor do I doubt that 
the substance and main argument of this drama sui generis 
(the Prometheus of Eschylus comes the nearest to the kind) 
were supplied by John the Evangelist: though I incline 
with Eusebius to find the poet himself in John, an Elder of 
the Church of Ephesus. 

It may remove, or at least mitigate, the objections to the 
palliative language in which I have spoken of the doc- 
trines of the Roman Catholic Church, if I remind the rea- 
der that that Church dates its true origin from the Council 
of Trent. Widely differing from my valued and affection- 
ately respected friend, the Rev. Edward Irving, in his in- 
terpretations of the Apocalypse and the Book of Daniel, and 
no less in his estimation of the latter, and while I honour 
his courage as a Christian minister, almost as much as I 
admire his eloquence as a writer, yet protesting against his 
somewhat too adventurous speculations on the Persons of 
the Trinity and the Body of our Lord, — I have great delight 
in extracting from his " Sermons, Lectures, and Discourses" 
vol. iii. p. 870, and declaring my cordial assent to the follow- 
ing just observations: namely, — "that after the Reforma- 
tion had taken firmer root, and when God had provided a 
purer Church, the Council of Trent did corroborate and 
decree into unalterable laws and constitutions of the Church 
all those impostures and innovations of the Roman See, 
which had been in a state of uncertainty, perhaps of permis- 
sion or even of custom ; but which every man till then had 
been free to testify against, and against which, in fact, there 
never wanted those in each successive generation who did 
testify. The Council of Trent ossified all those ulcers and 
blotches which had deformed the Church, and stamped the 



NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 153 

dissolution of the Latin empire, and the extinction 
of the Imperial power in Rome — and the cause 



hitherto much doubted and controverted prerogative of the 
Pope with the highest authority recognized in the Church." 
Then first was the Catholic converted and particularized into 
the Romish Church, the Church of the Papacy. 

Not less cordially do I concur with Mr Irving in his re- 
mark in the following page. For I too, " am free to confess 
and avow moreover, that I believe the soil of the Catholic 
Church, when Luther arose, was of a stronger mould, fitted 
to bear forest trees and cedars of God, than the soil of the 
Protestant Church in the times of Whitfield and Wesley, 
which (though sown with the same word) hath brought forth 
only stunted undergrowths, and creeping brushwood." I 
too, " believe, that the faith of the Protestant Church in 
Britain had come to a lower ebb, and that it is even now at 
a lower ebb, than was the faith of the Papal Church when 
the Spirit of the Lord was able to quicken in it and draw 
forth out of it such men as Luther, and Melancthon, and Bul- 
linger, Calvin, Bucer, and Latimer, and Ridley, and a 
score others whom I might nameT" 

And now, as the conclusion of this long note, let me be 
permitted to add a word or two of Edward Irving himself. 
That he possesses my unqualified esteem as a man, is only 
saying that I know him, and am neither blinded by envy nor 
bigotry. But my name has been brought into connexion with 
his on points that regard his public ministry ; and he him- 
self has publicly distinguished me as his friend on public 
grounds ; and in proof of my confidence in his regard, I have 
not the least apprehension of forfeiting it by a frank decla- 
ration of what I think. Well, then ! I have no faith in his 
prophesyings ; small sympathy with his fulminations ; and 
in certain peculiarities of his theological system as distinct 
from his religious principles I cannot see my way. But I 
hold withal, and not the less firmly for these discrepancies 
in our moods and judgments, that Edward Irving possesses 
more of the spirit and purposes of the first Reformers ; that 



3 54 ON THE CHURCH 

why the Bishop of Constantinople, with all imagi- 
nable good wishes and disposition to do the same, 

he has more of the head and heart, the life, the unction, and 
the genial power of Martin Luther than any man now alive ; 
yea, than any man of this and the last century. I see in 
Edward Irving a minister of Christ after the order of Paul ; 
and if the points, in which I think him either erroneous, or ex- 
cessive and out ofbounds, have been at anytime a subject of 
serious regret with me, this regret has arisen principally or 
altogether from the apprehension of their narrowing the 
sphere of his influence, from the too great probability that 
they may furnish occasion or pretext for withholding or with- 
drawing many from those momentous truths, which the age 
especially needs, and for the enforcement of which he hath 
been so highly and especially gifted. Finally, my friend's 
intellect is too instinct with life, too potential, to remain 
stationary ; and assuming, as every satisfied believer must 
be supposed to do, the truth of my own views, I look forward 
with confident hope to a time when his soul shall have per- 
fected her victory over the dead letter of the senses and its 
apparitions in the sensuous understanding ; when the hal- 
cyon Ideas shall have alit on the surging sea of his concep- 
tions, 

Which then shall quite forget to rave, 
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. 

But to return from the personal, for which I have little 
taste at any time, and the contrary when it stands in any 
connection with myself; — in order to the removal of one main 
impediment to the spiritual resuscitation of the Church 
it seems to me indispensable that in freedom and unfearing 
faith, with that courage which cannot but flow from the in- 
ward and life-like assurance, that neither death, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature, shall he able to separate us from the love of God, which 
is in Christ Jesus our Lord, the rulers of our Church and our 
t eachers of theology should meditate and draw the obvious, 



NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 155 

could never raise the Patriarchate of the Greek 
empire into a Papacy. The Bishops of the other 
Rome became the slaves of the Ottoman, the 
moment they ceased to be the subjects of the 
Emperor. 

I will now proceed to the Second Part, intended 
as a humble aid to ajust appreciation of the measure, 
which under the auspices of Mr. Peel and the Duke 
of Wellington is now the law of the land. This 
portion of the volume was written while the mea- 

though perhaps unpalatable, inferences from the following- 
two or three plain truths : — First, that Christ, the Spirit of 
Truth, has promised to be with his Church even to the end : — 
secondly, — that Christianity w 7 as described as a tree to be 
raised from the seed, so described by Him who brought the 
seed from Heaven and first sowed it: — lastly, — that in the 
process of evolution there are in every plant growths of 
transitory use and duration. " The integuments of the seed, 
having fulfilled their destined office of protection, burst and 
decay. After the leaves have unfolded, the cotyledons, that 
had performed their functions, wither and drop off."* The 
husk is a genuine growth of the staff of life ; yet we must 
separate it from the grain. It is, therefore, the cowardice 
of faithless superstition, if we stand in greater awe of the 
palpable interpolations of vermin; if we shrink from the 
removal of excrescences that contain nothing of nobler 
parentage than maggots of moth or chafer. Let us cease to 
confound oak-apples with acorns ; still less, though gilded 
by the fashion of the day, let us mistake them for golden 
pippins or renates.f 



* Smith's Introduction to Botany. 

t The fruit from a pippin grafted on a pippin, is called a 
rennet, that is, renate (re-natus) or twice-born. 



156 ON THE CHURCH, ETC. 

sure was yet in prospectu ; before even the par- 
ticular clauses of the Bill were made public. It 
was written to explain and vindicate my refusal 
to sign a petition against any change in the scheme 
of law and policy established at the Revolution. 
But as the arguments are in no respect affected by 
this circumstance ; nay, as their constant reference 
to, and dependence on, one fixed general principle, 
which will at once explain both why I find the 
actual Bill so much less objectionable than I had 
feared, and yet so much less complete and satis- 
factory than I had wished, will be rendered more 
striking by the reader's consciousness that the 
arguments were suggested by no wish or purpose 
either of attacking or supporting any particular 
measure ; it has not been thought necessary or 
advisable to alter the form. Nay, if I am right in 
my judgment that the Act lately passed, if charac- 
terized by its own contents and capabilities, really 
is — with or without any such intention on the part 
of its framers — a stepping-stone, and nothing 
more ; whether to the subversion or to the more 
perfect establishment of the Constitution in Church 
and State, must be determined by other causes ; — 
the Act in itself being equally fit for either, — and 
offering the same facilities of transit to both friend 
and foe, though with a foreclosure to the first 
comer ; — if this be a right, as it is my sincere judg- 
ment and belief, there is a propriety in retaining the 
•language of anticipation. Mons adhuc purturit : 
the ridiculus mus was but an omen. 



PART II. 

OR, AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 
OF THE ACT 

ADMITTING ROMAN CATHOLICS TO SIT IN BOTH 
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. 



'AfieXsLy nid rov At' ouk 6ua<r7rL()(j6cro/uLai* 
\e£co d' virep 'JZTEpoyvto/uLovwv, a fxoi Sokel' 

KCtl TOl deSoiKCL TToWd' TOUS T€ ydp TpOTTOVS 

toi/s ^v/uLiroXiTcov olca -xaipovras cr<p6dpa, 
hdv Tt§ avTovs evXoyrj kcll ty\v iroXiv, 
dvrjp dXa^cov, kclI dtKaia KadiKa' 
KavTavda Xavddvovcr 1 dirtfATroXip.fitvoi. 

Arist&ph. Acharn. 367. &;c. (leviter mutata.) 



I estimate the beauty and benefit of what is called 
" a harmony in fundamentals, and a conspiration 
in the constituent parts of the body politic," as 
highly as any one. If I met a man who should 
deny that an imperium in imperio was in itself an 
evil, I would not attempt to reason with him : he 
is too ignorant. Or if, conceding this, he should 
deny that the Romish Priesthood in Ireland does 
in fact constitute an imperium in imperio^ I yet 
would not argue the matter with him : for he must 
be a bigot. But my objection to the argument is, 
that it is nothing to the purpose. And even so 
with regard to the arguments grounded on the dan- 
gerous errors and superstitions of the Romish 
Church. They may be all very true ; but they are 
nothing to the purpose. Without any loss they 
might pair off with " the heroes of Trafalgar and 
Waterloo," and '' our Catholic ancestors, to whom 
we owe our Magma Charta," on the other side. If 
the prevention of a^i evil were the point in question, 
then indeed i But the day of prevention has long 
passed by. The evil exists : and neither rope, sword, 
nor sermon, neither suppression nor conversion, can 
remove it. Not that I think slightingly of the last ; 
but even those who hope more s anguinely than I 
can pretend to do respecting the effects ultimately 
to result from the labours of missionaries, the dis- 



160 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 

persion of controversial tracts, and whatever other 
lawful means and implements it may be in our 
power to employ — even these must admit that if 
the remedy could cope with the magnitude and 
inveteracy of the disease, it is wholly inadequate 
to the urgency of the symptoms. In this instance 
it would be no easy matter to take the horse to the 
water; and the rest of the proverb you know. 
But why do I waste words ? There is and can be 
but one question : and there is and can be but one 
way of stating it. A great numerical majority of 
the inhabitants of one integral part of the realm 
profess a religion hostile to that professed by the 
majority of the whole realm : and a religion, too, 
which the latter regard, and have had good reason 
to regard, as equally hostile to liberty and the sa- 
cred rights of conscience generally. In fewer 
words, three-fourths of his Majesty's Irish subjects 
are Roman Catholics, with a Popish priesthood, 
while three-fourths of the sum total of his Ma- 
jesty's subjects are Protestants. This with its 
causes and consequences is the evil. It is not in 
our power, by any immediate or direct means, to 
effect its removal. The point, therefore, to be de- 
termined is : Will the measures now in contempla- 
tion be likely to diminish or to aggravate it ? And 
to the determination of this point on the proba- 
bilities suggested by reason and experience I would 
gladly be aidant, as far as my poor mite of judg- 
ment will enable me. 

Let us, however, first discharge what may well 



OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 161 

be deemed a debt of justice from every well edu- 
cated Englishman to his Roman Catholic fellow- 
subjects of the Sister Island. At least, let us our- 
selves understand the true cause of the evil as it 
now T exists. To what and to whom is the present 
state of Ireland mainly to be attributed ? This 
should be the question : and to this I answer aloud, 
that it is mainly attributable to those, who during 
a period of little less than a whole century used as 
a substitute what Providence had given into their 
hand as an opportunity ; who chose to consider as 
superseding the most sacred duty a code of law, 
which could have been excused only on the plea 
that it enabled them to perform it. To the sloth 
and improvidence, the weakness and wickedness, 
of the gentry, clergy, and governors of Ireland, 
who persevered in preferring intrigue, violence, 
and selfish expatriation to a system of preventive 
and remedial measures, the efficacy of which had 
been warranted for them, alike by the whole pro- 
vincial history of ancient Rome, cui pacare sub- 
ados summa erat sapientia ; and by the happy re- 
sults of the few exceptions to the contrary scheme 
unhappily pursued by their and our ancestors. 

I can imagine no work of genius that would 
more appropriately decorate the dome or wall of a 
Senate house, than an abstract of Irish history 
from the landing of Strongbow to the battle of the 
Boyne, or to a yet later period, embodied in intel- 
ligible emblems — an allegorical history-piece de- 
signed in the spirit of a Rubens or a Buonarroti, 

M 



162 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 

and with the wild lights, portentous shades, and 
saturated colours of a Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and 
Spagnoletti. To complete the great moral and po- 
litical lesson by the historic contrast, nothing more 
would be required, than by some equally effective 
means to possess the mind of the spectator with 
the state and condition of ancient Spain, at less 
than half a century from the final conclusion of an 
obstinate and almost unremitting conflict of two 
hundred years by Agrippa's subjugation of the 
Cantabrians, omnibus Hispanice populis devictis 
et pacatis. At the breaking up of the Empire the 
West Goths conquered the country and made divi- 
sion of the lands. Then came eight centuries of 
Moorish domination. Yet so deeply had Roman 
wisdom impressed the fairest characters of the Ro- 
man mind, that at this very hour, if we except a 
comparatively insignificant portion of Arabic deri- 
vatives, the natives throughout the whole Peninsula 
speak a language less differing from the Romano, 
rustica or provincial Latin of the times of Lucan 
and Seneca, than any two of its dialects from each 
other. The time approaches, I trust, when our po- 
litical economists may study the science of the pro- 
vincial policy of the ancients in detail, under the 
auspices of hope, for immediate and practical pur- 
poses. 

In my own mind I am persuaded that the ne- 
cessity of the penal and precautionary statutes, 
passed under Elizabeth and the three succeeding 
reigns, is to be found as much in the passions and 



OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 163 

prejudices of the one party as in the dangerous 
dispositions of the other. The best excuse for this 
cruel code is the imperfect knowledge and mistaken 
maxims common to both parties. It is only to a 
limited extent that laws can be wiser than the na- 
tion for which they are enacted. The annals of 
the first five or six centuries of the Hebrew nation 
in Palestine present an almost continued history 
of disobedience, of laws broken or utterly forgotten, 
of maxims violated, and schemes of consummate 
wisdom left unfulfilled. Even a yet diviner seed 
must be buried and undergo an apparent corruption 
before — at a late period — it shot up and could ap- 
pear in its own kind. In our judgments respecting 
actions we must be guided by the idea, but in ap- 
plying the rule to the agents by comparison. To 
speak gently of our forefathers is at once piety and 
policy. Nor let it be forgotten that only by making 
the detection of their errors the occasion of our 
own wisdom do we acquire a right to censure them 
at all. 

Whatever may be thought of the settlement that 
followed the battle of the Boyne and the extinction 
of the war in Ireland, yet when this had been 
made and submitted to, it would have been the far 
wiser policy. I doubt not, to have provided for the 
safety of the Constitution by improving the quality 
of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility 
open, or like the former limited only by consider- 
ations of property. Still, however, the scheme of 
exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. 



164 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 

The ink was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls 
and proscription-lists of the Popish Parliament. 
The crimes of the man were generalized into at- 
tributes of his faith ; and the Irish Roman Catho- 
lics collectively were considered accomplices in the 
perfidy and baseness of King James. Alas ! his 
immediate adherents had afforded too great colour 
to the charge. The Irish massacre was in the 
mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be 
remembered, but as a thing of recent expectation, 
fear still blending with the sense of deliverance. 
At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying sys- 
tem have been enforced with so little reclamation 
of the conquered party, or with so little outrage 
on the general feeling of the country. There 
was no time, when it was so capable of being in- 
directly useful as a sedative in order to the appli- 
cation of the remedies directly indicated, or as a 
counter-power reducing to inactivity whatever dis- 
turbing forces might have interfered with their 
operation. And had this use been made of these 
exclusive laws, and had they been enforced as the 
precursors and negative conditions, but above all 
as bona fide accompaniments of a process of eman- 
cipation, properly and worthily so named, the code 
would at this day have been remembered in Ireland 
only as when recalling a dangerous fever of our 
boyhood we think of the nauseous drugs and 
drenching-horn, and congratulate ourselves that 
our doctors now-a-days know how to manage these 
things less coarsely. But this angry code was 



OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 165 

neglected as an opportunity, and mistaken for a 
substitute : et hinc illce lacrymce ! 

And at this point I find myself placed again in 
connection with the main, and which I contend to 
be the pertinent, question ; namely, the evil being- 
admitted, and its immediate removal impossible, is 
the admission of Roman Catholics into both Houses 
of the Legislature likely to mitigate or to aggravate 
it ? And here the problem is greatly narrowed by 
the fact that no man pretends to regard this admis- 
sibility as a direct remedy or specific antidote for 
the diseases under which Ireland labours. No ! it 
is to act, we are told, as introductory to the direct 
remedies. In short, this emancipation is to be, like 
the penal code which it repeals, a sedative, though 
in the opposite form of an anodyne cordial, that 
will itself be entitled to the name of a remedial 
measure in proportion as it shall be found to render 
the body susceptible of the more direct remedies 
that are to follow. Its object is to tranquillize 
Ireland. Safety, peace, and good neighbourhood, 
influx of capital, diminution of absenteeism, indus- 
trious habits and a long* train of blessings will fol- 
low. But the indispensable condition, the causa 
causarum et causatorum, is general tranquillity. 
Such is the language held by all the more intel- 
ligent advocates and encomiasts of emancipation. 
The sense of the question therefore is, will the 
measure tend to produce tranquillity ? 

Now it is evident that there are two parties to 
be satisfied, and that the measure is likely to effect 



166 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 

this purpose accordingly as it is calculated to 
satisfy reasonable men of both. Reasonable men 
are easily satisfied : would they were as numerous 
as they are pacable ! We must, however, under- 
stand the word comparatively as including all those 
on both sides, who by their superior information r 
talents, or property, are least likely to be under 
the dominion of vulgar antipathies, and who may 
be rationally expected to influence (and in certain 
cases, and in alliance with a vigorous government, 
to over-rule) the feelings and sentiments of the 
rest. 

Now the two indispensable conditions under 
which alone the measure can permanently satisfy 
the reasonable, that is, the satisfiable, of both 
parties, upon the supposition that in both parties 
such men exist and that they form the influencive 
class in both, are these : first, that the Act for 
the repeal of the exclusive statutes and the admis- 
sion of Roman Catholics to the full privileges of 
British subjects shall be grounded on some de- 
terminate principle, which involving interests and 
duties common to both parties as British subjects, 
both parties may be expected to recognize, and 
required to maintain inviolable : second, that this 
principle shall contain in itself an evident definite 
and unchangeable boundary, a line of demarcation, 
a ne plus ultra, which in all reasonable men and 
lovers of their country shall preclude the wish to 
pass beyond it, and extinguish the hope of so doing 
in such as are neither. 



OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 167 

But though the measure should be such as to 
satisfy all reasonable men, still it is possible that 
the number and influence of these may not be suf- 
ficient to leaven the mass, or to over-rule the agi- 
tators. I admit this ; but instead of weakening 
what I have here said, it affords an additional ar- 
gument in its favour. For if an argument satis- 
factory to the reasonable part should nevertheless 
fail in securing tranquillity, still less can the re- 
sult be expected from an arbitrary adjustment that 
can satisfy no part. If a measure grounded on 
principle, and possessing the character of an ultima- 
tum should still, through the prejudices and pas- 
sions of one or of both of the parties, fail of success, 
it would be folly to expect it from a measure that 
left full scope and sphere to those passions ; which 
kept alive the fears of the one party, while it 
sharpened the cupidity of the other. With confi- 
dence, therefore, I re-assert that only by reference 
to a principle, possessing the characters above enu- 
merated, can any satisfactory measure be framed, 
and that if this should fail in producing the tran- 
quillity aimed at, it will be in vain sought in any 
other. 

Again, it is evident that no principle can be ap- 
propriate to such a measure, which does not bear 
directly on the evil to be removed or mitigated. 
Consequently, it should be our first business to 
discover in what this evil truly and essentially con- 
sists. It is, we know, a compound of many ingre- 
dients. But we want to ascertain what the base 



168 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 

is that communicates the quality of evil, of poli- 
tical evil, of evil which it is the duty of a states- 
man to guard against, to various other ingredients, 
which without the base would have been innox- 
ious ; or though evils in themselves, yet evils of 
such a kind as to be counted by all wise statesmen 
among the tares, which must be suffered to grow 
up with the wheat to the close of the harvest, and 
left for the Lord of the harvest to separate. 

Further: the principle, the groundingand direct- 
ing principle of an effectual enactment, must be one 
on which a Roman Catholic might consistently 
vindicate and recommend the measure to Roman 
Catholics. It must therefore be independent of all 
differences purely theological. And the facts and 
documents, by which the truth and practical import- 
ance of the principle are to be proved or illustrated, 
should be taken by preference from periods anterior 
to the division of the Latin Church into Romish 
and Protestant. It should be such, in short, that 
an orator might with strict historical propriety intro- 
duce the framers and extorters of Magna Charta 
pleading to their Roman Catholic descendants in 
behalf of the measure grounded on such a prin- 
ciple, and invoking them in the name of the Con- 
stitution, over the growth of which they had kept 
armed watch, and by the sacred obligation to 
maintain it which they had entailed on their 
posterity. 

This is the condition under which alone I could 
conscientiously vote, and which being fulfilled, I 



OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 169 

should most zealously vote for the admission of lay 
Roman Catholics, not only to both houses of the 
Legislature, but to all other offices below the Crown 
without any exception. Moreover, in the fulfil- 
ment of this condition, in the solemn recognition 
and establishment of a principle having the charac- 
ters here specified, I find the only necessary secu- 
rity — convinced that this, if acceded to by the Ro- 
man Catholic community, would in effect be such, 
and that any other security will either be hollow, 
or frustrate the purpose of the Law. 

Now this condition would be fulfilled, the re- 
quired principle would be given, provided that the 
law for the repeal of the sundry statutes affecting 
the Roman Catholics were introduced by, and 
grounded on, a declaration, to which every possible 
character of solemnity should be given, that at no 
time and under no circumstances has it ever been, 
nor can it ever be, compatible with the spirit or 
consistent with the safety of the British Constitu- 
tion to recognize in the Roman Catholic priesthood, 
as now constituted, a component Estate of the 
realm, or persons capable, individually or collec- 
tively, of becoming the trustees and usufructuary 
proprietors of that elective and circulative property, 
originally reserved for the permanent maintenance 
of the National Church. And further, it is expe- 
dient that the preamble of the Act should expressly 
declare and set forth that this exclusion of the 
members of the Romish Priesthood (comprehending 
all under oaths of canonical obedience to the Pope 



170 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 

as their ecclesiastical sovereign) from the trusts and 
offices of the National Church, and from all parti- 
cipation in the proceeds of the Nationalty, is en- 
acted and established on grounds wholly irrelative 
to any doctrines received and taught by the Romish 
Church as articles of faith, and protested against 
as such by the Churches of the Reformation ; but 
that it is enacted on grounds derived and inherited 
from our ancestors before the Reformation, and by 
them maintained and enforced to the fullest ex- 
tent that the circumstances of the times permitted, 
with no other exceptions and interruptions than 
those effected by fraud, or usurpation, or foreign 
force, or the temporary fanaticism of the meaner 
sort. 

In what manner the enactment of this principle 
should be effected is of comparatively small impor- 
tance, provided it be distinctly set forth as that 
great constitutional security, the known existence 
of which is the ground and condition of the right 
of the Legislature to dispense with other less essen- 
tial safe-guards of the constitution, notunnecessary, 
perhaps, at the time of their enactment, but of 
temporary and accidental necessity. The form, I 
repeat, the particular mode in which the principle 
should be recognized, the security established, is 
comparatively indifferent. Let it only be under- 
stood first, as the provision, by the retention of 
which the Legislature possesses a moral and consti- 
tutional right to make the change in question ; as 
that, the known existence of which permits the 
law to ignore the Roman Catholics under any other 



OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 171 

name than that of British subjects ; and secondly, 
as the express condition, the basis of a virtual 
compact between the claimants and the nation, 
which condition cannot be broken or evaded with- 
out subverting (morally) the articles and clauses 
founded thereon. 

I do not assert that the provision here stated is 
an absolute security. My positions are, — first, that 
it may with better reason and more probability be 
proposed as such, than any other hitherto devised ; 
secondly, that no other securities can supersede 
the expediency and necessity of this, but that this 
will greatly diminish or altogether remove the ne- 
cessity of any other : further, that without this the 
present measure cannot be rationally expected to 
produce that tranquillity, which it is the aim and 
object of the framers to bring about ; and lastly, 
that the necessity of the declaration, as above given, 
formally and solemnly to be made and recorded, is 
not evacuated by this pretext, that no one intends 
to transfer the Church Establishment to the Ro- 
mish priesthood, or to divide it with them. 

One thing, however, it is of importance that I 
should mention, namely, that the existing state of 
the elective franchise* in Ireland, in reference to 

*• Although, since the text was written, the forty shilling 
freeholders no longer possess the elective franchise, yet as 
this particular clause of the Act already has been, and may 
hereafter be, made a pretext for agitation, the paragraph has 
been retained, in the belief that its moral uses have not been 
altogether superseded by the retraction of this most unhappy 
boon. 



172 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 

the fatal present of the Union ministry to the 
landed interest, that true Deianira shirt of the 
Irish Hercules, is altogether excluded from the 
theme and purpose of this disquisition. It ought 
to be considered by the Legislature, abstracted 
from the creed professed by the great majority of 
these nominal freeholders. The recent abuse of 
the influence resulting from this profession should 
be regarded as an accidental aggravation of the 
mischief, which displayed rather than constituted 
its malignity. It is even desirable that it should 
be preserved separate from the Roman Catholic 
Question, and in no necessary dependence on the 
fate of the Bill now on the eve of presentation to 
Parliament. Whether this be carried or be lost, 
it will still remain a momentous question, urgently 
calling for the decision of the Legislature — whether 
the said extension of the elective franchise has 
not introduced an uncombining and wholly incon- 
gruous ingredient into the representative system, 
irreconcilable with the true principle of election, 
and virtually disfranchising the class, to whom, on 
every ground of justice and of policy, the right un- 
questionably belongs ; — under any circumstances 
overwhelming 1 the voices of the rest of the commu- 
nity ; in ordinary times concentering in the great 
land-owners a virtual monopoly of the elective 
power ; and in times of factious excitement depri- 
ving them even of their natural and rightful influ- 
ence. 

These few suggestions on the expediency of re- 



OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 173 

vising the state of the representation in Ireland are, 
I am aware, but a digression from the main subject 
of the Chapter. But this in fact is already com- 
pleted, as far as my purpose is concerned. The 
reasons, on which the necessity of the proposed de- 
claration is grounded, have been given at large in 
the former part of the volume. Here, therefore, I 
should end ; but that I anticipate two objections 
of sufficient force to deserve a comment and form 
the matter of a concluding paragraph. 

First, it may be objected that, after abstracting 
the portion of evil which may be plausibly attributed 
to the peculiar state of landed property in Ireland, 
there are evils directly resulting from the Romanism 
of the most numerous class of the inhabitants, be- 
sides that of an extra-national priesthood, and 
against the political consequences of which the 
above declaration provides no security. To this I 
reply, that as no bridge ever did or can possess the 
demonstrable perfections of the mathematical arch, 
so can no existing State adequately correspond to 
the idea of a State. In nations and governments 
the most happily constituted there will be deformi- 
ties and obstructions, peccant humours and irregu- 
lar actions, which affect indeed the perfection of 
the State, but not its essential forms ; which retard, 
but do not necessarily prevent, its progress ; — ca- 
sual disorders which, though they aggravate the 
growing pains of a nation, may yet, by the vigo- 
rous counteraction which they excite, even promote 
its growth. Inflammations in the extremities and 



i 



174 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 

unseemly boils on the surface must not be con- 
founded with exhaustive misgrowths, or the poison 
of a false life in the vital organs. Nay, — and this 
remark is of special pertinency to the present pur- 
pose — even where the former derive a malignant 
character from their co-existence with the latter, 
yet the wise physician will direct his whole atten- 
tion to the constitutional ailments, knowing that 
when the source, the fons et fomes, veneni is 
sealed up, the accessories will either dry up of 
themselves, or, returning to their natural character 
rank among the infirmities which flesh is heir to ; 
and either admit of a gradual remedy, or where 
this is impracticable, or when the medicine would 
be worse than the disease, are to be endured as 
tolerabiles ineptice, trials of patience, and occasions 
of charity. I have here had the State chiefly in 
view ; but a member of the Church in England will 
to little purpose have availed himself of his free ac- 
cess to the Scriptures, will have read at least tbe 
Epistles of St. Paul with a very unthinking spirit, 
who does not apply the same maxims to the Church 
of Christ ; who has yet to learn that the Church 
militant is a floor whereon wheat and chaff are 
mingled together; that even grievous evils and 
errors may exist that do not concern the nature or 
being of a Church, and that they may even prevail 
in the particular Church, to which we belong, with- 
out justifying a separation from the same, and with- 
out invalidating its claims on our affection as a true 
and living part of the Church Universal. And with 



OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 175 

regard to such evils we must adopt the advice that 
Augustine (a man not apt to offend by any excess of 
charity) gave to the complainers of his day— z«£ 
miser icorditer corripiant quod possunt, quod non 
possunt patienter ferant, et cum delectione lu- 
geant, donee aut emendet Deus, aut in messe era- 
dicet zizania et paleas ventilet. 

Secondly, it may be objected that the declaration, 
so peremptorily by me required, is altogether un- 
necessary; that no one thinks of alienating the 
Church property, directly or indirectly ; that there 
is no intention of recognizing the Romish Priests 
in law, by entitling them as such to national 
maintenance, or in the language of the day by 
taking them into the pay of the State : in short, that 
the National Church is no more in danger than the 
Christian. And is this the opinion, the settled 
judgment, of one who has^studied the signs of 
the times ? Can the person who makes these asser- 
tions, have ever read a certain pamphlet by Mr. 
Croker ? — or the surveys of the counties, published 
under the authority of the now extinct Board of 
Agriculture ? Or r has he heard, or attentively 
perused, the successive debates in both Houses 
during the late agitation of the Roman Catholic 
question ? If he have — why then, relatively to the 
objector, and to as many as entertain the same 
opinions, my reply is : — the objection ijs unanswer- 
able. 



GLOSSARY TO THE APPENDED DIALOGUE. 

As all my readers are not bound to understand 
Greek, and yet, according to my deepest convic- 
tions, the truths set forth in the following com- 
bat of wit between the man of reason and the man 
of the senses have an interest for all, I have been 
induced to prefix the explanations of the few 
Greek words, and words minted from the Greek : 

Cosmos — world. Toutos* cosmos — this world. 
Heteros — the other, in the sense of opposition to, 
or discrepancy with, some former; as heterodoxy, 
in opposition to orthodoxy. Alios — an other sim- 
ply and without precluding or superseding the one 
before mentioned. Allocosmite — a denizen of an- 
other world. 

Mystes, from the Greek jjlvoj — one who muses 
with closed lips, as meditating on ideas which may 
indeed be suggested and awakened, but cannot, 
like the images of sense and the conceptions of 
the understanding, be adequately expressed by 
words. 

Where a person mistakes the anomalous mis- 
growths of his own individuality for ideas or 
truths of universal reason, he may, without impro- 
priety, be called a mystic, in the abusive sense of 

* Euphonies gratia.— Ed. 



GLOSSARY TO THE APPENDED DIALOGUE. 177 

the term ; though pseudo- mystic or phantast would 
be the more proper designation. Heraclitus, Plato, 
Bacon, Leibnitz, were mystics in the primary sense 
of the term; Iamblichus and his successors, phan- 
tasts. 

v E7T£a Zwovtcl — living words. — The following 
words from Plato may be Englished ; — " the com- 
mune and the dialect of Gods with or toward men ;*' 
and those attributed to Pythagoras ; — " the verily 
subsistent numbers or powers, the most prescient 
(or provident) principles of the earth and the hea- 
vens. " 

And here, though not falling under the leading 
title, Glossary, yet, as tending to the same object 
of fore-arming the reader for the following dia- 
logue, I transcribe two or three annotations, which 
I had pencilled, (for the book was lent to me by a 
friend who had himself borrowed it) on the mar- 
gins of a volume, recently published, and intituled, 
"The Natural History of Enthusiasm." They 
will, at least, remind some of my old school-fellows 
of the habit for which I was even then noted : and 
for others they may serve, as a specimen of the 
Marginalia, which, if brought together from the 
various books, my own and those of a score others, 
would go near to form as bulky a volume as most 
of those old folios, through which the larger por- 
tion of them are dispersed * 

* See the Author's Literary Remains. — Ed. 



178 NOTES ON ISAAC TAYLOR'S 

History or Enthusiasm. 

I. 

" Whatever is practically important on religion 
or morals, may at all times be advanced and argued 
in the simplest terms of colloquial expression." — 
p. 21.* 

NOTE. 

I do not believe this. Be it so, however. But 
why? Simply, because, the terms and phrases of 
the theological schools have, by their continual 
iteration from the pulpit, become colloquial. The 
science of one age becomes the common sense of a 
succeeding. The author adds — " from the pulpit, 
perhaps, no other style should at any time be 
heard." Now I can conceive no more direct means 
of depriving Christianity of one of its peculiar at- 
tributes, that of enriching and enlarging the mind, 
while it purifies and in the very act of purifying 
the will and affections, than the maxim here pre- 
scribed by the historian of enthusiasm. From the 
intensity of commercial life in this" country, and 
from some other less creditable causes, there is 
found even among our better educated men a 
vagueness in the use of words, which presents, in- 
deed, no obstacle to the intercourse of the market, 
but is absolutely incompatible with the attainment 
or communication of distinct and precise concep- 
tions. Hence in every department of exact know- 

* 7th edit. 



HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM. 179 

ledge a peculiar nomenclature is indispensable. 
The anatomist, chemist, botanist, mineralogist, 
yea, even the common artizan and the rude sailor 
discover that " the terms of colloquial expression," 
are too general and too lax to answer their pur- 
poses : and on what grounds can the science of 
self-knowledge, and of our relations to God and our 
own spirits, be presumed to form an exception ? 
Every new term expressing a fact, or a difference, 
not precisely and adequately expressed by any 
other word in the same language, is a new organ 
of thought for the mind that has learned it. 

II. 

" The region of abstract conceptions, of lofty 
reasonings, of magnificent images, has an atmos- 
phere too subtle to support the health of true piety. 
* * * In accordance with this, the Supreme * * 
in his word reveals barely a glimpse of his essential 
glories. By some naked affirmations we are, in- 
deed, secured against grovelling notions of the 
divine nature ; but these hints are incidental, and 
so scanty, that every excursive mind goes far be- 
yond them in its conception of the infinite attri- 
butes." — p. 26. 

NOTE. 

By " abstract conceptions " the Author means 
what I should call ideas, which as such I contra- 
distinguish from conceptions, whether abstracted 
or generalized. But it is with his meaning, not 
with his terms, that I am at present concerned. 



1'80 NOTES ON ISAAC TAYLOR^ 

Now that the personeity of God, the idea of God 
as the I am, is presented more prominently in 
Scripture than the (so called) physical attributes, 
is most true ; and forms one of the distinctive 
characters of its superior worth and value. It was 
by dwelling too exclusively on the infinites that 
the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato excepted, 
fell into pantheism, as in later times did Spinoza. 
" I forbid you," says Plato, " to call God the in- 
finite ! If you dare name him at all, say rather 
the measure of infinity." Nevertheless, it would 
be easy to place in synopsi before the Author such 
a series of Scripture passages as would incline him 
to retract his assertion. The Eternal, the Omni- 
present, the Omniscient, the one absolute Good, 
the Holy, the Living, the Creator as well as Former 
of the Universe, the Father of Spirits — can the 
Author's mind go far beyond these ? Yet these 
are all clearly affirmed of the Supreme One in the 
Scriptures. 

III. 

The following pages from p. 26 to p. 36 contain 
a succession of eloquent and splendid paragraphs 
on the celestial orders, and the expediency or ne- 
cessity of their being concealed from us, lest we 
should receive such overwhelming conceptions of 
the divine greatness as to render us incapable of 
devotion and prayer on the Scripture model. 
" Were it," says the eloquent writer, " indeed 
permitted to man to gaze upwards from step to 



HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM. 181 

step, and from range to range, of these celestial 
hierarchies, to the lowest steps of the Eternal 
Throne, what liberty of heart would afterwards be 
left him in drawing- near to the Father of Spirits ?" 
But the substance of these pages will be found 
implied in the following reply to them. 

NOTE. 

More weight with me than all this Pelion upon 
Ossa of imaginary hierarchies has the single remark 
of Augustine, that there neither are nor can be but 
three essential differences of being, namely, the 
absolute, the rational finite, and the finite irrational ; 
that is, God, man, and brute. Besides, the whole 
scheme is un-Scriptural, if not contra-Scriptural. 
Pile up winged hierarchies on hierarchies, and 
outblaze the Cabalists, and Dionysius the Areopa- 
gite ; yet what a gaudy vapor for a healthful mind 
is the whole conception (or rather phantasm) 
compared with the awful hope holden forth in the 
Gospel, to be one with God in and through the 
Mediator Christ, even the living, co-eternal Word 
and Son of God ! 

But through the whole of this eloquent decla- 
mation I find two errors predominate, and both, it 
appears to me, dangerous errors. First, that the 
rational and consequently the only true ideas of 
the Supreme Being are incompatible with the spirit 
of prayer and petitionary pleading taught and ex- 
emplified in the Scriptures. Second, that this 
being the case, and " supplication with arguments 



182 NOTES ON ISAAC TAYLOR'S 

and importunate requests " being irrational and 
known by the supplicant to be such, it is never- 
theless a duty to pray in this fashion. In other 
words, it is asserted that the Supreme Being re- 
quires of his rational creatures, as the condition of 
their offering acceptable worship to him, that they 
should wilfully blind themselves to the light, which 
he had himself given them, as the contradistin- 
guishing character of their humanity, without 
which they could not pray to him at all ; and that 
drugging their sense of the truth into a temporary 
doze, they should make believe that they know no 
better ! As if the God of Truth and Father of all 
lights resembled an oriental or African despot, whose 
courtiers, even those whom he had himself en- 
riched and placed in the highest rank, are com- 
manded to approach him only in beggars' rags and 
with a beggarly whine ! 

I on the contrary find " the Scripture model of 
devotion," the prayers and thanksgiving of the 
Psalmist, and in the main of our own Church Li- 
turgy, perfectly conformable to the highest and 
clearest convictions of my reason. (I use the word 
in its most comprehensive sense, as comprising 
both the practical and the intellective, not only as 
the light but likewise as the life which is the light 
of man. John i. 3.) And I do not hesitate to at- 
tribute the contrary persuasion principally to the 
three following oversights. First (and this is the 
queen bee in the hive of error), the identification 
of the universal reason with each man's individual 
understanding, subjects not only different but di- 



HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASiM. 183 

verse, not only aZZogeneous but heterogeneous. 
Second, the substitution of the idea of the infinite 
for that of the absolute. Third and lastly, the 
habit of using the former as a sort of superlative 
synonyme of the vast or indefinitely great. Now 
the practical difference between my scheme and 
that of the Essayist, for whose talents and inten- 
tions I feel sincere respect, may perhaps be stated 
thus. 

The Essayist would bring down his understand- 
ing to his religion : I would raise up my under- 
standing to my reason, and find my religion in the 
focus resulting from their convergence. We both 
alike use the same penitential, deprecative and 
petitionary prayers ; I in the full assurance of their 
congruity with my reason, he in a factitious oblivion 
of their being the contrary. 

The name of the author * of the Natural History 
of Enthusiasm is unknown to me and unconjec- 
tured. It is evidently the work of a mind at once 
observant and meditative. And should these notes 
meet the Author's eye, let him be assured that I 
willingly give to his genius that respect which his 
intentions without it would secure for him in the 
breast of every good man. But in the present 
state of things, infidelity having fallen into disre- 
pute even on the score of intellect, yet the obliga- 
tion to shew a reason for our faith having become 
more generally recognized, as reading and the taste 
for serious conversation have increased, there is a 

* Mr. Isaac Taylor.— Ed. 



184 DIALOGUE BETWEEN 

large class of my countrymen disposed to receive, 
with especial favour, any opinions that will enahle 
them to make a compromise between their new 
knowledge and their old belief. And with these 
men the Author's evident abilities will probably 
render the work a high authority. Now it is the 
very purpose of my life to impress the contrary 
sentiments. Hence these notes. 



DIALOGUE BETWEEN DEMOSIUS 
AND MYSTES.* 



MY DEAR 



In emptying a drawer of rose-leaf bags, old (but, 
too many of them) unopened letters, and paper 
scraps, or brain fritters, I had my attention di^ 
rected to a sere and ragged half-sheet by a gust of 
wind, which had separated it from its companions, 
and" whisked it out of the window into the garden. 
— Not that I went after it. I have too much res- 
pect for the numerous tribe, to which it belonged, 
to lay any restraint on their movements, or to put 
the Vagrant Act in force against them. But it so 
chanced that some after-breeze had stuck it on a 
standard rose-tree, and there I found it, as I was 
pacing my evening walk alongside the lower ivy- 
wall, the bristled runners from which threaten to 

* See ante p. 127.— Ed. 



DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 185 

entrap the top branch of the cherry tree in our 
neighbour's kitchen garden. I had been medi- 
tating a letter to you, and as I ran my eye over 
this fly-away tag-rag and bob- tail, and bethought 
me that it was a by-blow of my own, I felt a sort 
of fatherly remorse, and yearning towards it, and 

exclaimed, " If I had a frank for , this should 

help to make up the ounce." It was far too de- 
crepit to travel per se — besides that the seal would 
have looked like a single pin on a beggar's coat 
of tatters — and yet one does not like to be stopped 
in a kind feeling, which my conscience interpreted 
as a sort of promise to the said scrap, and there- 
fore, (frank or no frank), I will transcribe it. A 
dog's leaf at the top was worn off, which must 
have contained I presume, the syllable Ve — 

" Rily," quoth Demosius of 



Toutoscosmos, Gentleman, to Mystes the Allocos- 
mite, " thou seemest to me like an out-of-door 
patient of St. Luke's wandering about in the rain 
without cap, hat, or bonnet, poring on the elevation 
of a palace, not the house that Jack built, but the 
house that is to be built for Jack, in the suburbs of 
the city, which his cousin-germ an, the lynx-eyed 
Dr. Gruithuisen has lately discovered in the moon. 
But through a foolish kindness for that face of , 
thine, which whilome belonged to an old school- 
fellow of the same name with thee, I would get 
thee shipped off under the Alien Act, as a non e?is, 
or pre-existent of the other world to come." — 
To whom Mystes retorted ; — " Verily, friend De- 



186 DIALOGUE BETWEEN 

mosius, thou art too fantastic for a genuine Tou- 
toscosmos man ; and it needs only a fit of dyspepsy, 
or a cross in love to make a Heterocosmite of thee ; 
this same Heteroscosmos being in fact the endless 
shadow which the Toutoscosmos casts at sun-set. 
But not to alarm or affront thee, as if I insinuated 
that thou wert in danger of becoming an Allocos- 
mite, I let the whole of thy courteous address to 
me pass without comment or objection, save only 
the two concluding monosyllables and the preposi- 
tion (pre) which anticipates them. The world in 
which I exist is another world indeed, but not to 
come. It is as present as (if that be at all) the 
magnetic planet, of which, according to the as- 
tronomer Halley, the visible globe which we in- 
verminate is the case or travelling-trunk ; — a neat 
little world where light still exists in statu perfuso, 
as on the third day of the creation, before it was 
polarized into outw r ard and inward, that is, while 
light and life were one and the same, neither ex- 
isting formally, yet both eminenter : and when 
herb, flower, and forest rose as a vision, inproprio 
lucido, the ancestor and unseen yesterday of the 
sun and moon. Now, whether there really is such 
an Elysian mundus mundulus incased in the ma- 
crocosm, or great world, below the adamantine 
vault that supports the mother waters, which sup- 
port the coating crust of that mundus immundus 
on which we and others less scantily furnished from 
nature's storehouse crawl, delve, and nestle — (or, 
shall I say the Lyceum, where walk ol tovtov Kocrfiov 



DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 187 

(pi\6(70(poi) — Dr. H alley may, perhaps, by this time 
have ascertained : and to him and the philosophic- 
ghosts, his compeers, I leave it. But that another 
world is inshrined in the microcosm I not only be- 
lieve, but at certain depths of my being", during- the 
more solemn Sabbaths of the spirit, I have holden 
commune therewith, in the power of that faith, 
which is the substance of the things hoped for, the 
living stem that will itself expand into the flower, 
which it now foreshews. How should it not be so, 
even on grounds of natural reason, and the analogy 
of inferior life ? Is not nature prophetic up the 
whole vast pyramid of organic being? And in which 
of her numberless predictions has nature been con- 
victed of a lie ? Is not every organ announced by 
a previous instinct or act ? The larva of the stag- 
beetle lies in its chrysalis like an infant in the 
coffin of an adult, having left an empty space half 
the length it occupies ; and this space is the exact 
length of the horn which distinguishes the perfect 
animal, but which, when it constructed its tem- 
porary sarcophagus, was not yet in existence. Do 
not the eyes, ears, lungs of the unborn babe give 
notice and furnish proof of a transuterine, visible, 
audible, atmospheric world ? We have eyes, ears, 
touch, taste, smell ; and have we not an answering 
world of shapes, colours, sounds, and sapid and 
odorous bodies ? But likewise — (alas ! for the man 
for whom the one has not the same evidence of 
fact as the other) — the Creator has given us spi- 
ritual senses, and sense-organs — ideas I mean — 



188 DIALOGUE BETWEEN 

the idea of the good, the idea of the beautiful, 
ideas of eternity, immortality, freedom, and of that 
which contemplated relatively to will is holiness, 
in relation to life is bliss. And must not these too 
infer the existence of a world correspondent to 
them ? There is a light, said the Hebrew sage, 
compared with which the glory of the sun is but 
a cloudy veil : and is it an ignus fatuus given to 
mock us and lead us astray? And from a yet 
higher authority we know, that it is a light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 
And are there no objects to reflect it ? Or must 
we seek its analogon in the light of the glow- 
worm, that simply serves to distinguish one reptile 
from all the rest, and lighting, inch by inch, its 
mazy path through weeds and grass, leaves all else 
before, and behind, and around it in darkness ? 
No ! Another and answerable world there is ; and 
if any man discern it not, let him not, whether 
sincerely or in contemptuous irony, pretend a de- 
fect of faculty as the cause. The sense, the light, 
and the conformed objects are all there and for all 
men. The difference between man and man in 
relation thereto results from no difference in their 
several gifts and powers of intellect, but in the 
will. As certainly as the individual is a man, so 
certainly should this other world be present to him : 
yea, it is his proper home. But he is an absentee 
and chooses to live abroad. His freedom and 
whatever else he possesses which the dog and the 
ape do not possess, yea, the whole revenue of his 



DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 189 

humanity, is derived from this ; — but with the 
Irish land-owner in the theatres, gaming-houses, 
and maitresseries of Paris, so with him. He is a 
voluntary absentee. I repeat it again and again, — 
the cause is altogether in the will : and the defect 
of intellectual power, and " the having no turn or 
taste for subjects of this sort," are effects and con- 
sequences of the alienation of the will, that is, of 
the man himself. There may be a defect, but 
there was not a deficiency, of the intellect. I 
appeal to facts for the proof. Take the science of 
political economy. No two professors understand 
each other ; — and often have I been present where 
the subject has been discussed in a room full of 
merchants and manufacturers, sensible and well- 
informed men : and the conversation has ended in 
a confession that the matter was beyond their com- 
prehension. And yet the science professes to give 
light on rents, taxes, income, capital, the principles 
of trade, commerce, agriculture, on wealth, and 
the ways of acquiring and increasing it, in short 
on all that most passionately excites and interests 
the Toutoscosmos men. But it was avowed that 
to arrive at any understanding of these matters 
requires a mind gigantic in its comprehension, and 
microscopic in its accuracy of detail. Now com- 
pare this with the effect produced on promiscuous 
crowds by a Whitfield, or a Wesley; — or rather 
compare with it the shaking of every leaf of the 

vast forest to the first blast of Luther's trumpet. 

Was it onlv of the world to come that Luther and 



190 DIALOGUE BETWEEN 

his compeers preached ? Turn to Luther's Table 
Talk, and see if the larger part be not of that other 
world which now is, and without the being and 
working of which the world to come would be 
either as unintelligible as Abracadabra, or a mere 
reflection and elongation of the world of sense — 
Jack Robinson between two looking-glasses, with 
a series of Jack Robinsons in scecula sceculorumy 

" Well, but what is this new and yet other world ? 
The brain of a man that is out of his senses ? A 
world fraught with castles in the air, well worthy 
the attention of any gentleman inclined to idealize 
a large property?" 

" The sneer on that lip, and the arch shine of 
that eye, friend Demosius, would almost justify 
me, though I should answer that question by re- 
torting it in a parody. What, quoth the owlet, 
peeping out of his ivy-bush at noon, with his blue 
fringed eye-curtains dropped, what is this light 
which is said to exist together with this warmth 
we feel, and yet is something else ? But I read 
likewise in that same face, when thou wast be- 
ginning to prepare that question, a sort of mis- 
giving from within, as if thou wert more positive 
than sure that the reply, with which you would 
accommodate me, is as wise as it is witty. There- 
fore, though I cannot answer your question, I will 
give you a hint how you may answer it for yourself. 
Learn the art and acquire the habit of contem- 
plating things abstractedly from their relations. 



DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 191 

I will explain myself by an instance. Suppose a 
body floating at a certain height in the air, and 
receiving the light so equally on all sides as not 
to occasion the eye to conjecture any solid con- 
tents. And now let six or seven persons see it at 
different distances and from different points of view. 
For A it will be a square ; for B a triangle ; for 
C two right-angled triangles attached to each 
other ; for D two unequal triangles ; for E it will 
be a triangle with a trapezium hung on to it ; for 
F it will be a square with a cross in it ^ ; for 
G it will be an oblong quadrangle with three tri- 
* angles in it [X/l ; and for H three unequal tri- 
angles. 

Now it is evident that not one of all these is the 
figure itself, (which in this instance is a four-sided 
pyramid), but the contingent relations of the figure. 
Now transfer this from geometry to the subjects 
of the real (that is, not merely formal or abstract) 
sciences, — to substances and bodies, the materia 
subjecta of the chemist, physiologist and naturalist, 
and you will gradually (that is, if you choose and 
sincerely will it) acquire the power and the dis- 
position of contemplating your own imaginations, 
wants, appetites, passions, and opinions, on the 
same principles, and distinguish that which alone 
is and abides from the accidental and imperma- 
nent relations arising out of its co-existence with 
other things or beings. 

My second rule or maxim requires its prolego- 
mena. In the several classes and orders that mark 



192 DIALOGUE BETWEEN 

the scale of organic nature, from the plant to the 
highest order of animals, each higher implies a 
lower as the condition of its actual existence ; — 
and the same position holds good equally of the 
vital and organic powers. Thus, without the first 
power, that of growth, or what Bichat and others 
name the vegetive life or productivity, the second 
power, that of totality and locomotion (commonly 
but most infelicitously called irritability) could not 
exist, that is, manifest its being. Productivity 
is the necessary antecedent of irritability, and in 
like manner irritability of sensibility. But it is 
no less true that in the idea of each power the* 
lower derives its intelligibility from the higher : 
and the highest must be presumed to inhere latently 
or potentially in the lowest, or this latter will be 
wholly unintelligible, inconceivable ; — you can 
have no conception of it. Thus in sensibility we 
see a power that in every instant goes out of itself, 
and in the same instant retracts and falls back on 
itself: which the great fountains of pure Mathesis, 
the Pythagorean and Platonic geometricians, il- 
lustrated in the production or self-evolution of the 
point into the circle. Imagine the going-forth 
and the retraction as two successive acts, the re- 
sult would be an infinity of angles, a growth of 
zig-zag. In order to the imaginability of a cir- 
cular line, the extroitive and the retroitive must 
co-exist in one and the same act and moment, the 
curve line being the product. Now what is ideally 
true in the generations or productive acts of the 



DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 193 

intuitive faculty (of the pure sense, I mean> or 
inward vision — the reine Anschauung of the Ger- 
man philosophers) must be assumed as truth of 
fact in all living growth, or wherein would the 
growth of a plant differ from that of a crystal ? 
The latter is formed wholly by apposition ab extra : 
in the former the movement ab extra is in order 
of thought consequent on, and yet coinstantaneous 
with, the movement ab intra. Thus, the specific 
character of sensibility, the highest of the three 
powers, is found to be the general character of 
life, and supplies the only way of conceiving, the 
'only insight into the possibility of, the first and 
lowest power. And yet, even thus, growth taken 
as separate from, and exclusive of, sensibility 
would be unintelligible, nay, contradictory. For 
it would be an act of the life, or productive form 
of the plant, having the life itself as its source, 
(since it is a going forth from the life), and like- 
wise having the life itself as its object, for in the 
same instant it is retracted : and yet the product 
(that is, the plant) exists not for itself, by the hy- 
pothesis that has excluded sensibility. For all 
sensibility is a self-finding ; whence the German 
word for sensation or feeling is Empfindung , that 
is, an inward finding. Therefore sensibility cannot 
be excluded : and as it does not exist actually, it 
must be involved potentially. Life does not yet 
manifest itself in its highest dignity, as a self- 
finding ; but in an evident tendency thereto, or a 
self-seeking ; — and this has two epochs or intensi- 
o 



194 DIALOGUE BETWEEN 

ties. Potential sensibility in its first epoch, or 
lowest intensity, appears as growth : in its second 
epoch, it shews itself as irritability or vital in- 
stinct. In both, however, the sensibility must 
have pre-existed, or rather pre-inhered, though 
as latent : or how could the irritability have been 
evolved out of the growth, (as in the stamina of 
the plant during the act of impregnating the ger- 
?nen) : — or the sensibility out of the irritability, 
— as in the first appearance of nerves and nervous 
bulbs in the lower orders of the insect realm ? But, 
indeed, evolution as contradistinguished from ap- 
position, or superinduction ab aliunde, is implied 
in the conception of life : and is that which es- 
sentially differences a living fibre from a thread of 
asbestos, the floscule or any other of the moving 
fairy shapes of animalcular life from the frost- 
plumes on a window pane. 

Again : what has been said of the lowest power 
of life relatively to its highest power — growth to 
sensibility, the plant to the animal — applies equally 
to life itself relatively to mind. Without the latter 
the former would be unintelligible, and the idea 
would contradict itself. If there had been no 
self- retaining power, a self-finding would be a per- 
petual self-losing. Divide a second into a thou- 
sand, or if you please, a million of parts, yet if 
there be an absolute chasm separating one moment 
of self-findingfrom another, the chasm of a millionth 
of a second would be equal to all time. A being 
that existed for itself only in moments, each in- 
finitely small and yet absolutely divided from the 



DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 195 

preceding and following, would not exist for itself 
at all. And if all beings were the same, or yet 
lower, it could not be said to exist in any sense, 
any more than light would exist as light, if there 
were no eyes or visual power : and the whole con- 
ception would break up into contradictory posi- 
tions — an intestine conflict more destructive than 
even that between the two cats, where one tail 
alone is said to have survived the battle. The 
conflicting factors of our conception would eat each 
other up, tails and all. Ergo : the mind, as a 
self-retaining power, is not less indispensable to 
the intelligibility of life as a self-finding power, 
than a self-finding power, that is, sensibility, to a 
self-seeking power, that is, growth. Again : a 
self -retaining mind — that is, memory, (which is 
the primary sense of mind, and the common people 
in several of our provinces still use the word in this 
sense) — a self-retaining power supposes a self- 
containing power, a self-conscious being. And 
this is the definition of mind in its proper and dis- 
tinctive sense, a subject that is its own object, — 
or where A contemplant is one and the same sub- 
ject with A contemplated. Lastly, — (that I may 
complete the ascent of powers for my own satis- 
faction, and not as expecting, or in the present 
habit of your thoughts even wishing you to follow 
me to a height, dizzy for the strongest spirit, it 
being the apex of all human, perhaps of angelic, 
knowledge to know that it must be : since absolute 
ultimates can only be seen by a light thrown back- 
ward from the penultimate; John i. *18.) — lastly, 



196 DIALOGUE BETWEEN 

I say, the self-containing power supposes a self- 
causing power ; causa sui, atria v7repov(TioQ. Here 
alone we find a problem which in its very state- 
ment contains its own solution — the one self-solvino- 
power, beyond which no question is possible. Yet 
short of this we dare not rest ; for even O £2N, the 
Supreme Being, if contemplated abstractly from 
the Absolute Will, whose essence it is to be causa- 
tive of all being, would sink into a Spinozistic 
deity. That this is not evident to us arises from 
the false notion of reason as a quality, property, 
or faculty of the real : whereas reason is the su- 
preme reality, the only true being in all things 
visible and invisible ; the plerorna, in whom alone 
God loveth the world ! Even in man will is deeper 
than mind : for mind does not cease to be mind by 
having an antecedent ; but will is either the first 
(to ad Trpo7rpii)Tov, to nunquam positum, semper 
supponendum), or it is not will at all. 

And now for the practical rules which I pro- 
mised, or the means by which you may educate in 
yourself that state of mind which is most favourable 
to a true knowledge of both the worlds that now 
are, and to a right faith in the world to come. 

I. Remember that whatever is, lives. A thing 
absolutely lifeless is inconceivable, except as a 
thought, image, or fancy, in some other being. 

II. In every living form, the conditions of its 
existence are to be sought for in that which is 
below it; the^ grounds of its intelligibility in that 
which is above it. 

III. Accustom your mind to distinguish the 



DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 197 

relations of things from the things themselves. 
Think often of the latter as independent of the 
former, in order that you may never think of the 
former apart from the latter, that is, mistake mere 
relations for true and enduring realities : and with 
regard to these seek the solution of each in some 
higher reality. The contrary process leads de- 
monstrably to atheism, and though you may not 
get quite so far, it is not well to be seen travelling 
on the road with your face towards it. 

I might add a fourth rule : Learn to distinguish 
permanent from accidental relations. But I am 
willing that you should for a time take permanent 
relations as real things — confident that you will 
soon feel the necessity of reducing what you now 
call things into relations, which immediately arising 
out of a somewhat else may properly be contem- 
plated as the products of that somewhat else, and 
as the means by which its existence is made known 
to you. But known as what? not as a product ; 
for it is the somewhat else, to which the product 
stands in the same relation as the words which 
you are now hearing bear to my living soul. But 
if not as products, then as productive powers : 
and the result will be that what you have hitherto 
called things will be regarded as only more or less 
permanent relations of things, having their deriva 
tive reality greater or less in proportion as they 
are regular or accidental relations ; determined by 
the pre-established fitness of the true thing to the 
organ and faculty of the percipient, or resulting 
from some defect or anomaly in the latter. 



198 DIALOGUE, ETC. 

With these convictions matured into a habit of 
mind, the man no longer seeks, or believes himself 
to find, true reality except in the powers of nature ; 
which living 1 and actuating powers are made known 
to him, and their kinds determined, and their forces 
measured, by their proper products. In other 
words, he thinks of the products in reference to 
the productive powers, role, ovtwq virapypvGiv 
aptdfjLoig i) SwafJiEffi, tog raig TrpOfiaQevTaraiQ apycug 
tov iravrog ovpavov /cat yfjg, and thus gives to the 
former (to the products, I mean) a true reality, a 
life, a beauty, and a physiognomic expression. For 
him they are the 'iwea £ojovra, ojiiXia kol rj SloXektoq 
Oewv irpoq av6poj7rovQ. The Allocosmite, therefore, 
(though he does not bark at the image in the glass, 
because he knows what it is), possesses the same 
world with the Toutocosmites ; and has, besides, 
in present possession another and better world, to 
which he can transport himself by a swifter vehicle 
than Fortunatus's wishing cap. 

Finally, what is reason ? You have often asked * 
me ; and this is my answer ; 

Whene'er the mist, that stands 'twixt God and thee 
Defecates to a pure transparency, 
That intercepts no light and adds no stain — 
There reason is, and there begins her reign ! 

But, alas ! 

tu stesso tifai grosso 

Col f also immaginar, si che non vedi 
Cib che vedresti se I'avessi scosso. 

Dante, Par. Canto L 88. 

THE END. 



THE 

STATESMAN'S MANUAL;. 

OR, THE BIBLE THE BEST GUIDE TO POLITICAL SKILL AND 

FORESIGHT l A LAY SERMON, ADDRESSED TO 

THE HIGHER CLASSES OF SOCIETY, 

WITH AN APPENDIX, 

CONTAINING COMMENTS AND ESSAYS CONNECTED WITH THE 
STUDY OF THE INSPIRED WRITINGS. 

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
£econtr <Etrtttoit : 

WITH THE AUTHOR'S LAST CORRECTIONS AND NOTES, 

BY 

HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A. 



Ad isthac qu&so vos, qualiacunque prima videantur aspectu, 
attendite, ut qui vobis forsan insanire videar, saltern quibut 
insaniam rationibus cognoscatis. — Giordano Bruno. 



A LAY SERMON, 



ETC. 



For he established a testimony in Jacob and ap- 
pointed a law in Israel ; which he commanded 
our fathers, that they should make them 
known to their children : that the generation 
to come might know them, even the children 
which should be born ; who should arise and 
declare them to their children : that they 
might set their hope in God, and not forget 
the works of God. — Psalm lxxviii. 5, 6, 7. 

If our whole knowledge and information concern- 
ing: the Bible had been confined to the one fact of 
its immediate derivation from God, we should still 
presume that it contained rules and assistances 
for all conditions of men under all circumstances ; 
and therefore for communities no less than for in- 
dividuals. The contents of eveiy work must cor- 
respond to the character and designs of the work- 
master; and the inference in the present case is 
too obvious to be overlooked, too plain to be 
resisted. It requires, indeed, all the might of 



204 THE BIBLE 

superstition to conceal from a man of common 
understanding the further truth, that the interment 
of such a treasure in a dead language must needs 
be contrary to the intentions of the gracious Donor. 
Apostasy itself dared not question the premisses : 
and that the practical consequence did not follow, 
is conceivable only under a complete system of 
delusion, which from the cradle to the death-bed 
ceases not to over-awe the will by obscure fears, 
while it preoccupies the senses by vivid imagery 
and ritual pantomime. But to such a scheme all 
forms of sophistry are native. The very excel- 
lence of the Giver has been made a reason for 
withholding the gift ; nay the transcendant value 
of the gift itself assigned as the motive of its de- 
tention. We may be shocked at the presumption, 
but need not be surprised at the fact, that a jealous 
priesthood should have ventured to represent the 
applicability of the Bible to all the wants and oc- 
casions of men as a wax-like pliancy to all their 
fancies and prepossessions. Faithful guardians of 
Holy Writ, they are constrained to make it useless 
in order to guard it from profanation ; and those, 
whom they have most defrauded, are the readiest 
to justify the fraud. For imposture, organized into 
a comprehensive and self- consistent whole, forms 
a world of its own, in which inversion becomes the 
order of nature. 

Let it not be forgotten, however, (and I recom- 
mend the fact to the especial attention of those 
among ourselves, who are disposed to rest con- 



OPEN TO ALL. 205 

tented with an implicit faith and passive acqui- 
escence) that the Church of Rome never ceased 
to avow the profoundest reverence for the Scrip- 
tures themselves, and what it forbids its vassals 
to ascertain, it not only permits, but commands 
them to take for granted. 

Whether, and to what extent, this suspension 
of the rational functions, this spiritual slumber, 
will be imputed as a sin to the souls who are still 
under chains of Papal darkness, we are neither 
enabled or authorized to determine. It is enough 
for us to know that the land, in which we abide, 
has like another Goshen been severed from the 
plague, and that we have light in our dwellings. 
The road of salvation for us is a high road, and the 
wayfarers, though simple, need not err therein. 
The Gospel lies open in the market-place and on 
every window seat, so that (virtually at least) the 
deaf may hear the words of the book. It is 
preached at every turning, so that the blind may 
see them. (Isai. xxix. 18.) The circumstances 
then being so different, if the result should prove 
similar, we may be quite certain that we shall not 
be holden guiltless. The ignorance which may 
be the excuse of others will be our crime. Our 
birth and denizenship in an enlightened and Pro- 
testant land will, with all our rights and fran- 
chises to boot, be brought in judgment against us, 
and stand first in the fearful list of blessings 
abused. The glories of our country will form the 
blazonry of our own impeachment, and the very 



206 EXHORTATION 

name of Englishmen, of which we are almost all 
of us too proud, and for which scarcely any of us 
are enough thankful, will be annexed to that of 
Christians only to light up our shame and to 
aggravate our condemnation. 

I repeat, therefore, that the habitual unreflect- 
ingness, which in certain countries may be sus- 
ceptible of more or less palliation in most instances, 
can in this country be deemed blameless in none.. 
The humblest and least educated of our country- 
men must have wilfully neglected the inestimable 
privileges secured to all alike, if he has not him- 
self found, if he has not from his own personal 
experience discovered, the sufficiency of the Scrip- 
tures* in all knowledge requisite for a right 
performance of his duty as a man and a Christian. 
Of the labouring classes, who in all countries form 
the great majority of the inhabitants, more than 
this is not demanded, more than this is not per- 
haps generally desirable. They are not sought for 
in public counsel, nor need they be found where 
politic sentences are spoken. It is enough if every 
one is wise in the working of his own craft : so 
best will they maintain the state of the ivorld. 

But you, my friends, to whom the following 
pages are more particularly addressed, as to men 
moving in the higher class of society, — you will, 
I hope, have availed yourselves of the ampler 
means entrusted to you by God's providence, for 

* See App. (A.)— Ed, 



TO THE STUDY OF IT. 207 

a more extensive study and a wider use of hi> 
revealed will and word. From you we have a 
right to expect a sober and meditative accommo- 
dation to your own times and country of those 
important truths declared in ,the inspired w r ritings 
for a thousand generations, and of the awful 
examples, belonging to all ages, by which those 
truths are at once illustrated and confirmed. Would 
you feel conscious that you had shewn yourselves 
unequal to your station in society, — would you 
stand degraded in your own eyes, — if you betrayed 
an utter want of information respecting the acts 
of human sovereigns and legislators ? And should 
you not much rather be both ashamed and afraid 
to know yourselves inconversant with the acts and 
constitutions of God, whose law execute th itself, 
and whose Word is the foundation, the power, and 
the life of the universe ? Do you hold it a requi- 
site of your rank to shew yourselves inquisitive 
concerning the expectations and plans of states- 
men and state -councillors ? Do you excuse it as 
natural curiosity, that you lend a listening ear to 
the guesses of state-gazers, to the dark hints and 
open revilings of our self-inspired state-fortune- 
tellers, the wizards, that peep and mutter and 
forecast, alarmists by trade, and malcontents for 
their bread? And should you not feel a deeper 
interest in predictions which are permanent pro- 
phecies, because they are at the same time eternal 
truths ? Predictions which in containing the 
grounds of fulfilment involve the principles of fore- 



208 THE BIBLE. 

sight, and teach the science of the future in its per- 
petual elements ? 

But I will struggle to believe that of those 
whom I now suppose myself addressing there are 
few who have not so employed their greater leisure 
and superior advantages as to render these remarks, 
if not wholly superfluous, yet personally inappli- 
cable. In common with your worldly inferiors, 
you will indeed have directed your main attention 
to the promises and the information conveyed in 
the records of the Evangelists and Apostles ; — 
promises, that need only a lively trust in them, 
on our own part, to be the means as well as the 
pledges of our eternal welfare — information that 
opens out to our knowledge a kingdom that is not 
of this world, thrones that cannot be shaken, and 
sceptres that can neither be broken nor transferred. 
Yet not the less on this account will you have 
looked back with a proportionate interest on the 
temporal destinies of men and nations, stored up 
for our instruction in the archives of the Old 
Testament : not the less will you delight to retrace 
the paths by which Providence has led the king- 
doms of this world through the valley of mortal 
life ; — paths engraved with the footmarks of cap- 
tains sent forth from the God of armies ; — nations 
in whose guidance or chastisement the arm of 
Omnipotence itself was made bare. 

Recent occurrences have given additional 
strength and fresh force to our sage poet's eulogy 
on the Jewish Prophets ; — 



A MANUAL FOR STATESMEN. 209 

As men divinely taught and better teaching 

The solid rules of civil government 

In their majestic unaffected style, 

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. 

In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt 

What makes a nation happy and keeps it so, 

What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat. 

Par. Reg. iv. 354. 

If there be any antidote to that restless craving 
for the wonders of the day, which in conjunction 
with the appetite for publicity is spreading* like an 
efflorescence on the surface of our national cha- 
racter ; if there exist means for deriving resigna- 
tion from general discontent, means of building 
up with the very i;:aterials of political gloom that 
stedfast frame of hope which affords the only cer- 
tain shelter from the throng of self- realizing alarms, 
at the same time that it is the natural home and 
workshop of all the active virtues ; that antidote 
and these means must be sought for in the colla- 
tion of the present with the past, in the habit of 
thoughtfully assimilating the events of our own 
age to those of the time before us. If this be a 
moral advantage derivable from history in general, 
rendering its study therefore a moral duty for such 
as possess the opportunities of books, leisure and 
education, it would be inconsistent even with the 
name of believers not to recur with pre-eminent 
interest to events and revolutions, the records of 
which are as much distinguished from all other 
history by their especial claims to divine authority, 
p 



210 THE BIBLE 

as the facts themselves were from all other facts 
by especial manifestation of divine interference. 
Whatsoever things, saith Saint Paul, (Rom.xv. 4.) 
were written aforetime, were written for our 
learning ; that we through patience and comfort 
of the Scriptures might have hope. 

In the infancy of the world signs and wonders 
were requisite in order to startle and break down 
that superstition, — idolatrous in itself and the 
source of all other idolatry, — which tempts the 
natural man to seek the true cause and origin of 
public calamities in outward circumstances, per- 
sons and incidents : in agents therefore that were 
themselves but surges of the same tide, passive 
conductors of the one invisible influence, under 
which the total host of billows, in the whole line 
of successive impulse, swell and roll shoreward ; 
there finally, each in its turn, to strike, roar and 
be dissipated. 

But with each miracle worked there was a truth 
revealed, which thenceforward was to act as its 
substitute. And if we think the Bible less appli- 
cable to us on account of the miracles, we degrade 
ourselves into mere slaves of sense and fancy, 
which are indeed the appointed medium between 
earth and heaven, but for that very cause stand in 
a desirable relation to spiritual truth then only, 
when, as a mere and passive medium, they yield 
a free passage to its light. It was only to over- 
throw the usurpation exercised in and through the 
senses, that the senses were miraculously appealed 



A MANUAL FOR STATESMEN. 211 

to; for reason and religion are their own evidence.* 
The natural sun is in this respect a symbol of the 
spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his 
glories are still under veil, he calls up the breeze 
to chase away the usurping vapours of the night- 
season, and thus converts the air itself into the 
minister of its own purification : not surely in 
proof or elucidation of the light from heaven, but 
to prevent its interception. 

Wherever, therefore, similar circumstances co- 
exist with the same moral causes, the principles 
revealed, and the examples recorded, in the inspired 
writings render miracles superfluous : and if we 
neglect to apply truths in expectation of wonders, 
or under pretext of the cessation of the latter, we 
tempt God, and merit the same reply which our 
Lord gave to the Pharisees on a like occasion. 
A wicked and an adulterous generation seeketh 
after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to 
it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas, (Matt. xvi. 
4 :) that is, a threatening call to repentance. f 
Equally applicable and prophetic will the following 
verses be. The queen of the South shall rise up 
in the judgment with the men of this generation 
and condemn them : for she came from the ut- 
most parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of 
Solomon ; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is 
here. — The men of Nineveh shall rise in judg- 
ment with this generation and shall condemn it ; 

* See App. (B).—Ed. f See App. (C.)— Ed. 



212 HISTORY RIGHTLY STUDIED 

for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, 
behold, a greater than Jonas is here, (Luke xi. 
31, 32.) For have we not divine assurance that 
Christ is with his Church even to the end of the 
world? And what could the queen of the South, 
or the men of Nineveh have beholden, that could 
enter into competition with the events of our own 
times, in importance, in splendour, or even in 
strangeness and significancy ? 

The true origin of human events is so little 
susceptible of that kind of evidence which can 
compel our belief; so many are the disturbing 
forces which in every cycle of changes modify 
the motion given by the first projection ; and 
every age has, or imagines it has, its own circum- 
stances which render past experience no longer 
applicable to the present case ; that there will 
never be wanting answers, and explanations, and 
specious flatteries of hope to persuade a people 
and its government that the history of the past is 
inapplicable to their case. And no wonder, if we 
read history for the facts instead of reading it for 
the sake of the general principles, which are to 
the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves : 
and no wonder, if history so read should find a 
dangerous rival in novels, nay, if the latter should 
be preferred to the former on the score even of 
probability. I well remember, that when the 
examples of former Jacobins, as Julius Csesar, 
Cromwell, and the like, were adduced in France 
and England at the commencement of the French 



PROPHETIC. 213 

Consulate, it was ridiculed as pedantry and pedant's 
ignorance to fear a repetition of usurpation and 
military despotism at the close of the enlightened 
eighteenth century ! Even so, in the very dawn 
of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions 
of Corey ra, the proscriptions of the Reformers, 
Marius, Caesar, and the like, and the direful effects 
of the levelling tenets in the Peasants' War in 
Germany, were urged on the Convention, and its 
vindicators ; I well remember that the Magi of the 
day, the true citizens of the world, the plusquam- 
perfecti of patriotism, gave us set proofs that 
similar results were impossible, and that it was 
an insult to so philosophical an age, to so enlight- 
ened a nation, to dare direct the public eye towards 
them as to lights of warning ! Alas ! like lights 
in the stern of a vessel they illumined the path 
only that had been past over ! 

The politic Florentine* has observed, that there 
are brains of three races. The one understands 
of itself; the other understands as much as is 
shown it by others ; the third neither understands 
of itself, nor what is shewn it by others. In our 
times there are more perhaps who belong to the 
third class from vanity and acquired frivolity of 
mind, than from natural incapacity. It is no un- 
common weakness with those who are honoured 



* Sono di tre generazioni cervelli: Vuno intende per se ; 
i'altro intende quant o da altri gii t mostro ; e il terzo nan 
intende ne per se stesso nt per dimostrazione di altri. 

II Principe, c. xxii. 



214 SPECULATIVE PRINCIPLES 

with the acquaintance of the great, to attribute 
national events to particular persons, particular 
measures, to the errors of one man, to the intrigues 
of another, to any possible spark of a particular 
occasion, rather than to the true proximate cause, 
(and which alone deserves the name of a cause) 
the predominant state of public opinion. And still 
less are they inclined to refer the latter to the 
ascendancy of speculative principles, and the 
scheme or mode of thinking 1 in vogue. I have 
known men, who with significant nods and the 
pitying contempt of smiles have denied all influ- 
ence to the corruptions of moral and political 
philosophy, and with much solemnity have pro- 
ceeded to solve the riddle of the French Revolution 
by Anecdotes ! Yet it would not be difficult, by 
an unbroken chain of historic facts, to demonstrate 
that the most important changes in the commercial 
relations of the world had their origin in the closets 
or lonely walks of uninterested theorists ; — that 
the mighty epochs of commerce, that have changed 
the face of empires ; nay, the most important of 
those discoveries and improvements in the me- 
chanic arts, which have numerically increased our 
population beyond what the wisest statesmen of 
Elizabeth's reign deemed possible, and again 
doubled this population virtually; the most im- 
portant, I say, of those inventions that in their 
results 

best uphold 

War by her two main nerves, iron and gold — 



CAUSES OF REVOLUTIONS IN SOCIETY. 215 

had their origin not in the cabinets of statesmen, 
or in the practical insight of men of business, but 
in the visions of recluse genius. To the immense 
majority of men, even in civilized countries, spe- 
culative philosophy has ever been, and must ever 
remain, a terra incognita. Yet it is not the less 
true, that all the epoch-forming revolutions of the 
Christian world, the revolutions of religion and 
with them the civil, social, and domestic habits of 
the nations concerned, have coincided with the 
rise and fall of metaphysical systems.* So few 
are the minds that really govern the machine of 
society, and so incomparably more numerous and 
more important are the indirect consequences of 
things than their foreseen and direct effects. 

It is with nations as with individuals. In tran- 
quil moods and peaceable times we are quite prac- 
tical. Facts only and cool common sense are then 
in fashion. But let the winds of passion swell, 
and straitway men begin to generalize ; to connect 
by remotest analogies ; to express the most uni- 
versal positions of reason in the most glowing 
figures of fancy ; in short, to feel particular truths 
and mere facts, as poor, cold, narrow, and incom- 
mensurate with their feelings. 

With his wonted fidelity to nature, our own great 
poet has placed the greater number of his pro- 



* This thought might also be applied to, and exemplified 
by, the successive epochs in the history of the Fine Arts 
from the tenth century. 1827. 



216 AFFINITY OF ABSTRACT NOTIONS 

foundest maxims and general truths, both political 
and moral, not in the mouths of men at ease, but 
of men under the influence of passion, when the 
mighty thoughts overmaster and become the ty- 
rants of the mind that has brought them forth. 
In his Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, principles 
of deepest insight and widest interest fly off like 
sparks from the glowing iron under the loud forge- 
hammer.* 

* It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a 
fact that none, but the unread in history, will deny, that in 
periods of popular tumult and innovation the more abstract 
a notion is, the more readily lias it been found to combine, 
the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings of a 
people and with all their immediate impulses to action. At 
the commencement of the French Revolution, in the re- 
motest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and 
enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the phy- 
siocratic politicians and economists. The public roads were 
crowded with armed enthusiasts disputing on the inalienable 
sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the 
pure reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising 
out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike 
were under the obligation of adopting. Turn over the fu- 
gitive writings, that are still extant, of the age of Luther ; 
peruse the pamphlets and loose sheets that came out in 
flights during the reign of Charles I. and the Republic ; and 
you will find in these one continued comment on the apho- 
rism of Lord Bacon (a man assuredly sufficiently acquainted 
with the extent of secret and personal influence), that the 
knowledge of the speculative principles of men in general 
between the age of twenty and thirty is the one great source 
of political prophecy. And Sir Philip Sidney regarded the 
adoption of one set of principles in the Netherlands, as a 
proof of the divine agency and the fountain of all the events 
and successes of that Revolution. 



WITH PASSION. 217 

A calm and detailed examination of the facts 
justifies me to my own h^ind in hazarding the bold 
assertion, that the fearful blunders of the late dread 
Revolution, and all the calamitous mistakes of its 
opponents from its commencement\even to the sera 
of loftier principles and wiser measures (an sera, 
that began with, and ought to be named ifrom, the 
war of the Spanish and Portuguese insurgents) 
every failure with all its gloomy results may £>e 
unanswerably deduced from the neglect of some 
maxim or other that had been established by clear 
reasoning and plain facts in the writings of Thu- 
cydides, Tacitus, Machiavel, Bacon, or Harrington. 
These are red-letter names even in the almanacks 
of worldly wisdom : and yet I dare challenge all 
the critical benches of infidelity to point out any 
one important truth, any one efficient practical di- 
rection or warning, which did not pre-exist, (and 
for the most part in a sounder, more intelligible, 
and more comprehensive form) in the Bible. 

In addition to this, the Hebrew legislator, and 
! the other inspired poets, prophets, historians and 
moralists of the Jewish Church have two peculiar 
advantages in their favor. First, their particular 
rules and prescripts flow directly and visibly from 
universal principles, as from a fountain : they flow 
from principles and ideas that are not so properly 
said to be confirmed by reason as to be reason 
itself. Principles in act and procession, disjoined 
from which, and from the emotions that inevitably 
accompany the actual intuition of their truth, the 



218 FAITH IN THE REASON AND CONSCIENCE 

widest maxims of prudence are like arms without 
hearts, muscles without rverves. Secondly, from 
the very nature of these principles, as taught in 
the Bible, they are/ understood in exact proportion 
as they are believed and felt. The regulator is 
never separated from the main spring. For the 
words of/ the Apostle are literally and philosophi- 
cally /true : We (that is, the human race) live by 
fdhth. Whatever we do or know that in kind is 
different from the brute creation, has its origin in 
a determination of the reason to have faith and 
trust in itself. This, its first act of faith, is scarcely 
less than identical with its own being. Implicite, 
it is the copula — it contains the possibility — of 
every position, to which there exists any corres- 
pondence in reality.* It is itself, therefore, the 
realizing principle, the spiritual substratum of the 
whole complex body of truths. This primal act of 
faith is enunciated in the word, God : a faith not 
derived from, but itself the ground and source of, 
experience, and without which the fleeting chaos 
of facts would no more form experience, than the 
dust of the grave can of itself make a living man. 
The imperative and oracular form of the inspired 



* I mean that, but for the confidence which we place in 
the assertions of our reason and conscience, we could have 
no certainty of the reality and actual outness of the material 
world. It might be affirmed that in what we call ' sleep ' 
every one has a dream of his own ; and that in what we call 
' awake,' whole communities dream nearly alike. It is ! — 
is a sense of reason : the senses can only say — It seems I 
1827. 



THE DISTINCTION OF MAN 219 

Scripture is the form of reason itself in all things 
purely rational and moral. 

If Scripture be the word of Divine Wisdom, we 
might anticipate that it would in all things be dis- 
tinguished from other books, as the Supreme Rea- 
son, whose knowledge is creative, and antecedent 
to the things known, is distinguished from the un- 
derstanding, or creaturely mind of the individual, 
the acts of which are posterior to the things which 
it records and arranges. Man alone was created 
in the image of God : a position groundless and 
inexplicable, if the reason in man do not differ from 
the understanding. For this the inferior animals 
(many at least) possess in degree : and assuredly 
the divine image or idea is not a thing of degrees. 

•Hence it follows that what is expressed in the 
Scriptures is implied in all absolute science. The 
latter whispers what the former utter as with the 
voice of a trumpet. As sure as God liveth, is the 
pledge and assurance of every positive truth, that 
is asserted by the reason. The human under- 
standing musing on many things snatches at truth, 
but is frustrated and disheartened by the fluctuating 
nature of its objects;* its conclusions therefore 



* T[oTaj±<j) yap ovk egtiv &j3i]vai dig Tip civtuj Kax' 
'HpdicXeiTov, ovte SvrjTfjg ovviac dig axpavSai Kara 'i^iv 
ciXXd d^vrrjTi Kai ra%6t fjLeraj3o\r]g (JKidvijcn Kai iraXiv 
rrvvdyei, pdXXov fie ovde ttccXlv ov£e vcrrepov dXX' it pa 
(TvvicrTaTcii Kai cnroXuTcu, Kai irpoaeKJi Kai clttehji' b$ev 
ovd' eig to elvai 7repaivei to yty vopevov ai>Tfjg Tip p)]ce- 
ttots Xrjyeiv, prjd' 'ivTciGSai ti)v ysveviv, k. t. \. 

Piitarch's De EL apnd Delphos c. xviii. 



220 THE BIBLE A SOURCE OF ACTION. 

are timid and uncertain, and it hath no way of 
giving permanence to things but by reducing them 
to abstractions. Hardly do we guess aright at 
things that are upon earth, and with labour do we 
find the things that are before us ; but all certain 
knowledge is in the power of God, and a presence 
from above. So only have the ways of men been 
reformed, and every doctrine that contains a saving 
truth, and all acts pleasing to God (in other words, 
all actions consonant with human nature, in its 
original intention) are through wisdom; that is, 
the rational spirit of man. 

This then is the prerogative of the Bible ; this 
is the privilege of its believing students. With 
them the principle of knowledge is likewise a spring 
and principle of action. And as it is the only 
certain knowledge, so are the actions that flow 
from it the only ones on which a secure reliance 
can be placed. The understanding may suggest 
motives, may avail itself of motives, and make 
judicious conjectures respecting the probable con- 
sequences of actions. But the knowledge taught 
in the Scriptures produces the motives, involves 
the consequences ; and its highest forrnu la is still : 
As sure as God liveth, so will it be unto thee ! 
Strange as this position will appear to such as 
forget that motives can be causes only in a se- 
condary and improper sense, inasmuch as the man 
makes the motive, not the motives the man ; yet 
all history bears evidence to its truth. The sense 
of expediency, the cautious balancing of compa- 



GENESIS OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 221 

rative advantages, the constant wakefulness to the 
Cui bono? — in connection with the Quidmihi ? — 
all these are in their places in the routine of con- 
duct, by which the individual provides for himself 
the real or supposed wants of to-day and to-morrow : 
and in quiet times and prosperous circumstances a 
nation presents an aggregate of such individuals, 
a busy ant-hill in calm and sunshine. By the 
happy organization of a well-governed society the 
contradictory interests of ten millions of such in- 
dividuals may neutralize each other, and be recon- 
ciled in the unity of the national interest. But 
whence did this happy organization first come ? 
Was it a tree transplanted from Paradise, with all 
its branches in full fruitage V Or was it sowed in 
sunshine ? Was it in vernal breezes and gentle 
rains that it fixed its roots, and grew and strength- 
ened? Let history answer these questions. With 
blood was it planted ; it was rocked in tempests ; 
the goat, the ass, and the stag gnawed it; the wild 
boar has whetted his tusks on its bark. The deep 
scars are still extant on its trunk, and the path of 
the lightning may be traced among its higher 
branches. And even after its full growth, in the 
season of its strength, when its height reached to 
the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth, 
the whirlwind has more than once forced its stately 
top to touch the ground : it has been bent like a 
bow, and sprang back like a shaft. Mightier 
powers were at work than expediency ever yet 
called up; yea, mightier than the mere under- 



222 HUME S HISTORY. 

standing can comprehend. One confirmation of 
the latter assertion you may find in the history of 
our country, written by the same Scotch philoso- 
pher who devoted his life to the undermining* of 
the Christian religion ; and expended his last 
breath in a blasphemous regret that he had not 
survived it; — by the same heartless sophist who, 
in this island, was the main pioneer of that atheistic 
philosophy, which in France transvenomed the 
natural thirst of truth into the hydrophobia of a 
wild and homeless scepticism; the Elias of that 
Spirit of Anti-christ, which 

still promising- 



Freedom, itself too sensual to be free, 
Poisons life's amities and cheats the soul 
Of faith, and quiet hope and all that lifts 
And all that soothes the spirit !* 

This inadequacy of the mere understanding to 
the apprehension of moral greatness we may trace 
in this historian's cool systematic attempt to steal 
away every feeling of reverence for every great 
name by a scheme of motives, in which as often 
as possible the efforts and enterprises of heroic 
spirits are attributed to this or that paltry view of 
the most despicable selfishness. But in the ma- 
jority of instances this would have been too palpably 
false and slanderous : and therefore the founders 
and martyrs of our Church and Constitution, pf 
our civil and religious liberty, are represented as 
fanatics and bewildered enthusiasts. But histories 

* Poet. Works, I. p. 137. —Ed. 



ENTHUSIASM : IDEAS ACTUATE PRINCIPLES. 223 

incomparably more authentic than Mr. Hume's, 
(nay, spite of himself even his own history,) con- 
firm by irrefragable evidence the aphorism of an- 
cient wisdom, that nothing* great was ever achieved 
without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but 
the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object 
dearer than self, or in an idea more vivid ? How 
this is produced in the enthusiasm of wickedness, 
I have explained in the second Comment annexed 
to this Discourse. But in the genuine enthusiasm 
of morals, religion, and patriotism, this enlarge- 
ment and elevation of the soul above its mere self 
attest the presence, and accompany the intuition, 
of ultimate principles alone. These alone can in- 
terest the undegraded human spirit deeply and 
enduringly, because these alone belong to its es- 
sence, and will remain with it permanently. 

Notions, the depthless abstractions of fleeting 
jihcenomena, the shadows of sailing vapors, the 
colorless repetitions of rainbows, have effected 
their utmost when they have added to the distinct- 
ness of our knowledge. For this very cause they 
are of themselves adverse to lofty emotion, and it 
requires the influence of a light and warmth, not 
their own, to make them crystallize into a sem- 
blance of growth. But every principle is actualized 
by an idea ; and every idea is living, productive, 
partaketh of infinity, and (as Bacon has sublimely 
observed) containeth an endless power of semina- 
tion. Hence it is, that science, which consists 
wholly in ideas and principles, is power. Scientia 
et potentia (saith the same philosopher) in idem 



224 IDEAS UNIVERSAL AND NATIVE TO MAN. 

coincidnnt. Hence too it is, that notions, linked 
arguments, reference to particular facts and cal- 
culations of prudence, influence only the compara- 
tively few, the men of leisurely minds who have 
been trained up to them : and even these few they 
influence but faintly. But for the reverse, I appeal 
to the general character of the doctrines which 
have collected the most numerous sects, and acted 
upon the moral being of the converts with a force 
that might well seem supernatural. The great 
principles of our religion, the sublime ideas spoken 
out everywhere in the Old and New Testament, 
resemble the fixed stars, which appear of the same 
size to the naked as to the armed eye ; the mag- 
nitude of which the telescope may rather seem to 
diminish than to increase. At the annunciation 
of principles, of ideas, the soul of man awakes and 
starts up, as an exile in a far distant land at the 
unexpected sounds of his native language, when 
after long years of absence, and almost of oblivion, 
he is suddenly addressed in his own mother- tongue. 
He weeps for joy, and embraces the speaker as his 
brother. How else can we explain the fact so 
honorable to Great Britain, that the poorest* 
amongst us will contend with as much enthusiasm 
as the richest for the rights of property ? These 

* The reader will remember the anecdote told with so 
much humour in Goldsmith's Essay. But this is not the 
first instance where the mind in its hour of meditation finds 
matter of admiration and elevating thought in circumstances 
that in a different mood had excited its mirth. 



TRUTHS OF SCRIPTURE EVER NEW. 225 

rights are the spheres and necessary conditions of 
free agency. But free agency contains the idea of 
the free will ; and in this he intuitively knows the 
sublimity, and the infinite hopes, fears, and capa- 
bilities of his own nature. On what other ground 
but the cognateness of ideas and principles to man 
as man does the nameless soldier rush to the 
combat in defence of the liberties or the honor of 
his country ? — Even men woefully neglectful of 
the^ precepts of religion will shed their blood for 
its truth. 

Alas ! — the main hindrance to the use of the 
Scriptures, as your manual, lies in the notion that 
you are already acquainted with its contents. 
Something new must be presented to you, wholly 
new and wholly out of yourselves ; for whatever is 
within us must be as old as the first dawn of human 
reason. Truths of all others the most awful and 
mysterious and at the same time of universal in- 
terest are considered so true as to lose all the 
powers of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory 
of the soul, side by side with the most despised 
and exploded errors. But it should not be so with 
you ! The pride of education, the sense of con- 
sistency should preclude the objection : for would 
you not be ashamed to apply it to the works of 
Tacitus, or of Shakspeare ? Above all, the rank 
which you hold, the influence you possess, the 
powers you may be called to wield, give a special 
unfitness to this frivolous craving for novelty. 
To find no contradiction in the union of old and 
Q 



226 TRUTHS OF SCRIPTURE 

new, to contemplate the Ancient of days, his words 
and his works, with a feeling as fresh as if they 
were now first springing forth at his fiat — this 
characterizes the minds that feel the riddle of the 
world and may help to unravel it. This, most of 
all things, will raise you above the mass of man- 
kind, and therefore will best entitle and qualify 
you to guide and control them. You say, you are 
already familiar with the Scriptures. With the 
words, perhaps, but in any other sense you might 
as wisely boast of your familiar acquaintance with 
the rays of the sun, and under that pretence turn 
away your eyes from the light of heaven. 

Or would you wish for authorities, for great 
examples ? You may find them in the writings of 
Thuanus, of Clarendon, of More, of Raleigh ; and 
in the life and letters of the heroic Gustavus Adol- 
phus. But these, though eminent statesmen, were 
Christians, and might lie under the thraldom of 
habit and prejudice. I will refer you then to au- 
thorities of two great men, both pagans ; but re- 
moved from each other by many centuries, and not 
more distant in their ages than in their characters 
and situations. The first shall be that of Hera- 
clitus, the sad and recluse philosopher. HoXv/uiadiri 
voov ov htiacncEC 2t'j3v\Aa de fiaivofxevu) arojian 
ayeXacrra kclI aKaXX<j)7r terra iced afxvptffra (j)6eyyo- 
fjievr) yCklwv krwv k^tKveirai ry (j)(i)vfj Sia rbv 0foV.* 

* Multiscience (or a variety and quantity of acquired 
knowledge) does not teach intelligence. But the Sibyll 



KEY TO KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD. 227 

Shall we hesitate to apply to the prophets of God, 
what could be affirmed of the Sibyls by a philoso- 
pher whom Socrates, the prince of philosophers, 
venerated for the profundity of his wisdom ? 

For the other, I will refer you to the darling 
of the polished court of Augustus, to the man 
whose works have been in all ages deemed the 
models of good sense, and are still the pocket 
companions of those who pride themselves on 
uniting the scholar with the gentleman. This 
accomplished man of the world has given an ac- 
count of the subjects of conversation between the 
illustrious statesmen who governed, and the bright- 
est luminaries who then adorned, the empire of 
the civilized world : 

Sermo oritur non de villis domibusve alienis 
Nee, male nee ne Lepos saltet. Sed quod magis ad nos 
Pertinet, et nescire malum est, agitamus : utrumne 
Divitiis homines, an sint virtute beati ; 
Et quod sit natura boni, summumque quid ejus* 



with wild enthusiastic mouth shrilling forth unmirthful, 
nornate, and unperfumed truths, reaches to a thousand years, 
with her voice through the power of God. 

Not her's 



To win the sense by words of rhetoric, 
Lip-blossoms breathing perishable sweets ; 
But by the power of the informing Word 
Roll sounding onward through a thousand years 
Her deep prophetic bodements. 

Lit. Rem. III. p. 419.— Ed. 

Hor. Serm.II. t. 6. 71, &c. 



228 TRUTHS OF SCRIPTURE 

Berkeley indeed asserts, and is supported in his 
assertion by the great statesmen, Lord Bacon and 
Sir Walter Raleigh, that without an habitual in- 
terest in these subjects a man may be a dexterous 
intriguer, but never can be a statesman. 

But do you require some one or more particular 
passage from the Bible, that may at once illustrate 
and exemplify its applicability to the changes and 
fortunes of empires ? Of the numerous chapters 
that relate to the Jewish tribes, their enemies and 
allies, before and after their division into two 
kingdoms, it would be more difficult to state a 
single one from which some guiding light might 
not be struck. And in nothing is Scriptural his- 
tory more strongly contrasted with the histories of 
highest note in the present age, than in its free- 
dom from the hollowness of abstractions. While 
the latter present a shadow-fight of things and 
quantities, the former gives us the history of men, 
and balances the important influence of individual 
minds with the previous state of the national 
morals and manners, in which, as constituting a 
specific susceptibility, it presents to us the true 
cause both of the influence itself, and of the weal 
or woe that were its consequents. How should it 
be otherwise ? The histories asid political economy 
of the present and preceding century partake in 
the general contagion of its mechanic philosophy, 
and are the product of an unenlivened generalizing 
understanding. In the Scriptures they are the 
living educts of the imagination ; of that recon- 



KEY TO KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD. 1229 

ciling and mediatory power, which incorporating 
the reason in images of the sense, and organizing* 
(as it were) the flux of the senses by the perma- 
nence and self-circling energies of the reason, 
gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in 
themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of 
which they are the conductors. These are the 
wheels which Ezekiel beheld, when the hand of 
the Lord was upon him, and he saw visions of 
God as he sate among the captives by the river of 
Chebar. Whithersoever the Spirit was to go, the 
wheels went, and thither was their spirit to go: — 
for the spirit of the living creature was in the 
wheels also* The truths and the symbols that 
represent them move in conjunction and form the 
living chariot that bears up (for us) the throne of 
the Divine Humanity. Hence, by a derivative, 
indeed, but not a divided, influence, and though 
in a secondary yet in more than a metaphorical 
sense, the Sacred Book is worthily entitled the 
Word of God. Hence too, its contents present 
to us the stream of time continuous as life and a 
symbol of eternity, inasmuch as the past and the 
future are virtually contained in the present. 
According therefore to our relative position on the 
banks of this stream the Sacred History becomes 
prophetic, the Sacred Prophecies historical, while 
the power and substance of both inhere in its laws, 
its promises, and its comminations. In the Scrip- 

* Ezeh i. 20. 



230 SYMBOLS CHARACTERIZED. 

tures therefore both facts and persons must of 
necessity have a two-fold significance, a past and 
a future, a temporary and a perpetual, a particular 
and a universal application. They must be at once 
portraits and ideals. 

JSheu ! paupertina philosophia in pauper tinam 
religionem ducit : — A hunger-bitten and idea-less 
philosophy naturally produces a starveling and 
comfortless religion. It is among the miseries of 
the present age that it recognizes no medium be- 
tween literal and metaphorical. Faith is either to 
be buried in the dead letter, or its name and 
honors usurped by a counterfeit product of the 
mechanical understanding, which in the blindness 
of self-complacency confounds symbols with alle- 
gories. Now an allegory is but a translation of 
abstract notions into a picture -language, which is 
itself nothing but an abstraction from objects of 
the senses ; the principal being more worthless 
even than its phantom proxy, both alike unsub- 
stantial, and the former shapeless to boot. On the 
other hand a symbol (6 eariv ael ravrriyopiicov) is 
characterized by a translucence of the special in 
the individual, or of the general in the special, or 
of the universal in the general ; above all by the 
translucence of the eternal through and in the 
temporal. It always partakes of the reality which 
it renders intelligible ; and while it enunciates the 
whole, abides itself as a living part in that unity 
of which it is the representative. The other are 
but empty echoes which the fancy arbitrarily asso- 



PECULIAR TEACHING OF THE BIBLE. 231 

ciates with apparitions of matter, less beautiful but 
not less shadowy than the sloping orchard or hill- 
side pasture-field seen in the transparent lake 
below. Alas, for the flocks that are to be led 
forth to such pastures ! It shall even be as when 
a hungry man dreameth, and behold, he eateth; 
but he awake th and his soul is empty : or as 
when a thirsty man dreameth, and behold he 
drinketh ; but he awaketh and behold, he is 
faint /* O ! that we would seek for the bread 
which was given from heaven, that we should eat 
thereof and be strengthened ! O that we would 
draw at the well at which the flocks of our fore- 
fathers had living water drawn for them, even 
that water which, instead of mocking the thirst 
of him to whom it is given, becomes a well within 
himself springing up to life everlasting ! 

When we reflect how large a part of our present 
knowledge and civilization is owing, directly or 
indirectly, to the Bible ; when we are compelled 
to admit, as a fact of history, that the Bible has 
been the main lever by which the moral and intel- 
lectual character of Europe has been raised to 
its present comparative height ; we should be 
struck, methinks, by the marked and prominent 
difference of this book from the works which it is 
now the fashion to quote as guides and authorities 
in morals, politics, and history. I will point out 
a few of the excellencies by which the one is dis- 

* Is. xxix. 8. — Ed, 



232 NECESSITY THREEFOLD. 

tinguished, and shall leave it to your own judg- 
ment and recollection to perceive and apply the 
contrast to the productions of highest name in 
these latter days. In the Bible every agent ap- 
pears and acts as a self- subsisting individual ; 
each has a life of its own, and yet all are one life. 
The elements of necessity and free-will are recon- 
ciled in the higher power of an omnipresent Pro- 
vidence, that predestinates the whole in the moral 
freedom of the integral parts. Of this the Bible 
never suffers us to lose sight. The root is never 
detached from the ground. It is God everywhere : 
and all creatures conform to his decrees, the righ- 
teous by performance of the law, the disobedient 
by the sufferance of the penalty. 

Suffer me to inform or remind you, that there 
is a threefold necessity. There is a logical, and 
there is a mathematical necessity ; but the latter 
is always hypothetical, and both subsist formally 
only, not in any real object. Only by the intuition 
and immediate spiritual consciousness of the idea 
of God, as the One and Absolute, at once the 
ground and the cause, who alone containeth in 
himself the ground of his own nature, and therein 
of all natures, do we arrive at the third, which 
alone^is a real objective, necessity. Here the im- 
mediate consciousness decides : the idea is its own 
evidence, and is insusceptible of all other. It is 
necessarily groundless and indemonstrable ; be- 
cause it is itself the ground of all possible demon- 
stration. The reason hath faith in itself in its 



HEBREW AND GREEK IDEAS OF GOD. 233 

own revelations. O \6yog Ztyrj. Ipse dixit. So 
it is : for it is so. All the necessity of causal 
relations (which the mere understanding reduces, 
and must reduce to co-existence and regular suc- 
cession* in the objects of which they are predicated, 
and to habit and association in the mind predi- 
cating) depends on, or rather inheres in, the 
idea of the omnipresent and absolute : for this it 
is, in which the possible is one and the same with 
the real and the necessary. Herein the Bible 
differs from all the books of Greek philosophy, 
and in a two-fold manner. It doth not affirm a 
divine nature only, but a God : and not a God 
only, but the living God. Hence in the Scriptures 
alone is the jus divinum, or direct relation of the 
state and its magistracy to the Supreme Being, 
taught as a vital and indispensable part of ail 
moral and of all political wdsdom, even as the 
Jewish alone was a true theocracy. 

Were it my object to touch on the present state 
of public affairs in this kingdom, or on the pro- 
spective measures in agitation respecting our sister 
island, I would direct your most serious medita- 
tions to the latter period of the reign of Solomon, 
and to the revolutions in the reign of Rehoboam, 
his successor. But I should tread on glowine* 
embers. I will turn to a subject on which all 



* See Hume's Essays. The sophist evades, as Cicero 
long ago remarked, the better half of the predicament, 
which is not praire but efficienter praire. 



234 SOURCES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

men of reflection are at length in agreement — 
the causes of the Revolution and fearful chastise- 
ment of France. We have learned to trace them 
back to the rising importance of the commercial 
and manufacturing class, and its incompatibility 
with the old feudal privileges and prescriptions ; 
to the spirit of sensuality and ostentation, which 
from the court had spread through all the towns 
and cities of the kingdom ; to the predominance 
of a presumptuous and irreligious philosophy ; to 
the extreme over-rating of the knowledge and 
power given by the improvements of the arts and 
sciences, especially those of astronomy, mechanics, 
and a wonder-working chemistry ; to an assump- 
tion of prophetic power, and the general conceit 
that states and governments might be and ought 
to be constructed as machines, every movement 
of which might be foreseen and taken into previous 
calculation ; to the consequent multitude of plans 
and constitutions, of planners and constitution- 
makers, and the remorseless arrogance with which 
the authors and proselytes of every new proposal 
were ready to realize it, be the cost what it might 
in the established rights, or even in the lives, of 
men ; in short, to restlessness, presumption, sen- 
sual indulgence, and the idolatrous reliance on 
false philosophy in the whole domestic, social, and 
political life of the stirring and effective part of 
the community : these all acting, at once and to- 
gether, on a mass of materials supplied by the 
unfeeling extravagance and oppressions of the go- 



FORESHOWN IN ISAIAH. 235 

vernment, which shewed no mercy, and very 
heavily laid its yoke. 

Turn then to the chapter from which the last 
words were cited, and read the following seven 
verses ; and I am deceived if you will not be com- 
pelled to admit that the Prophet revealed the true 
philosophy of the French revolution more than two 
thousand years before it became a sad irrevocable 
truth of history. And thou saidst, I shall be a 
lady for ever : so that thou didst not lay these 
things to thy heart, neither didst remember the 
latter end of it. Therefore, hear now this, thou 
that art given to pleasures, that dwellest care- 
lessly, that say est in thine heart, I am, and none 
else beside me ! I shall not sit as a ividow, 
neither shall I know the loss of children. But 
these two things shall come to thee in a moment, 
in one day ; the loss of children, and widowhood ; 
they shall come upon thee in their perfection, 
for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the 
great abundance of thine enchantments. For 
thou hast trusted in thy wickedness ; thou hast 
said, none seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy know- 
ledge, it hath perverted thee ; and thou hast said 
in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. 
Therefore shall evil come upon thee, thou shalt 
not know* from whence it riseth: and mischief 



* The reader will scarcely fail to find in this verse a 
remembrancer of the sudden setting-in of the frost, a fort- 
night before the usual time (in a country too, where the 



236 THIS SERMON, TO WHOM ADDRESSED. 

shall fall upon thee, thou shalt not be able to 
put it off; and desolation shall come upon thee 
suddenly, which thou shalt not know. Stand 
now vjith thine enchantments, and with the mul- 
titude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured 
from thy youth ; if so be thou shalt be able to 
profit, if so be thou may est prevail. Thou art 
wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let 
now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly 
prognosticators stand up, and save thee from 
these things that shall come upon thee. (Is. xlvii. 
7, &c.) 

There is a grace that would enable us to take 
up vipers, and the evil thing shall not hurt us : 
a spiritual alchemy which can transmute poisons 
into a panacea. We are counselled by our Lord 
himself to make unto ourselves friends of the 
Mammon of unrighteousness : and in this age of 
sharp contrasts and grotesque combinations it 
would be a wise method of sympathizing with the 



commencement of its two seasons is in general scarcely less 
regular than that of the wet and dry seasons between the 
tropics) which caused, and the desolation which accom- 
panied, the flight from Moscow. The Russians baffled the 
physical forces of the imperial Jacobin, because they were 
inaccessible to his imaginary forces. The faith in St. Ni- 
cholas kept off at safe distance the more pernicious super- 
stition of the destinies of Napoleon the Great. The English 
in the Peninsula overcame the real, because they set at 
defiance, and had heard only to despise, the imaginary 
powers of the irresistible Emperor. Thank Heaven! the 
heart of the country was sound at the core. 



A READING PUBLIC. 237 

tone and spirit of the times, if we elevated even 
our daily newspapers and political journals into 
comments on the Bible. 

When I named this Essay a Sermon, I sought 
to prepare the inquirers after it for the absence of 
all the usual softenings suggested by worldly pru- 
dence, of all compromise between truth and cour- 
tesy. But not even as a sermon would I have 
addressed the present discourse to a promiscuous 
audience ; and for this reason I likewise announced 
it in the title-page, as exclusively ad clerum ; that 
is, (in the old and wide sense of the word) to men 
of clerkly acquirements of whatever profession. I 
would that the greater part of our publications 
could be thus directed, each to its appropriate class 
of readers. But this cannot be. For among other 
odd burs and kecksies, the misgrowth of our lux- 
uriant activity, we have now a Reading Public* — 

* Some participle passive in the diminutive form, Erudi- 
tulorum Natio for instance, might- seem at first sight a fuller 
and more exact designation; but the superior force and 
humor of the former become evident whenever the phrase 
occurs as a step or stair in a climax of irony. By way of 
example take the following sentences, transcribed from a 
work demonstrating that the New Testament was intended 
exclusively for the primitive converts from Judaism, was 
accommodated to their prejudices, and is of no authority, 
as a rule of faith, for Christians in general. " The Read- 
ing Public in this enlightened age and thinking nation, by 
its favorable reception of liberal ideas, has long demon- 
strated the benign influence of that profound philosophy 
which has already emancipated us from so many absurd 
prejudices held in superstitious awe by our deluded fore- 



238 PHILOSOPHIC POPULACE. 

as strange a phrase, methinks, as ever forced a 
splenetic smile on the staid countenance of medi- 
tation ; and yet no fiction. For our readers have, 
in good truth, multiplied exceedingly, and have 
waxed proud. It would require the intrepid accu- 
racy of a Colquhoun to venture at the precise 
number of that vast company only, whose heads 
and hearts are dieted at the two public ordinaries 
of literature, the circulating libraries and the peri- 
odical press. But what is the result ? Does the 

fathers. But the dark age yielded at length to the dawning 
light of reason and common sense at the glorious, though 
imperfect, Revolution. The People can he no longer duped 
or scared out of their imprescriptible and inalienable right 
to judge and decide for themselves on all important ques- 
tions of government and religion. The scholastic jargon of 
jarring articles and metaphysical creeds may continue for a 
time to deform our Church- establishment ; and like the gro- 
tesque figures in the niches of our old Gothic cathedrals, 
may serve to remind the nation of its former barbarism ; 
but the universal suffrage of a free and enlightened Public," 
&c. &c. 

Among the revolutions worthy of notice, the change in 
the nature of the introductory sentences and prefatory 
matter in serious books is not the least striking. The same 
gross flattery which disgusts us in the dedications to indi- 
viduals in the elder writers, is now transferred to the nation 
at large, or the Reading Public : while the Jeremiads of 
our old moralists, and their angry denunciations concerning 
the ignorance, immorality, and irreligion of the People, ap- 
pear (mutatis mutandis, and with an appeal to the worst 
passions, envy, discontent, scorn, vindictiveness,) in the 
shape of bitter libels on ministers, parliament, the clergy : 
in short, on the State and Church, and all persons employed 
in them. 



TWO ERRORS TO BE FEARED. 239 

inward man thrive on this regimen ? Alas ! if the 
average health of the consumers may be judged of 
by the articles of largest consumption ; if the se- 
cretions may be conjectured from the ingredients 
of the dishes that are found best suited to their 
palates ; from all that I have seen, either of the 
banquet or the guests, I shall utter my profaccia 
with a desponding sigh. From a popular philo- 
sophy and a philosophic populace, Good Sense 
deliver us ! 

At present, however, I am to imagine for myself 
a very different audience. I appeal exclusively to 
men, from whose station and opportunities I may 
dare to anticipate a respectable portion of that sound 
book-learnedness, into which our old public schools 
still continue to initiate their pupils. I appeal to 
men in whom I may hope to find, if not philosophy, 
yet occasional impulses at least to philosophic 
thought. And here, as far as my own experience 
extends, I can announce one favourable symptom. 
The notion of our measureless superiority in good 
sense to our ancestors, so general at the com- 
mencement of the French Revolution, and for 
some years before it, is out of fashion. We hear, 
at least, less of the. jargon of this enlightened age. 
After fatiguing itself, as performer or spectator in 
the giddy figure-dance of political changes, Europe 
has seen the shallow foundations of its self-com- 
placent faith give way ; and among men of influ- 
ence and property, we have now more reason to 
apprehend the stupor of despondence, than the 



240 NATIONAL EDUCATION. 

extravagancies of hope, unsustained by experience, 
or of self-confidence not bottomed on principle. 

In this rank of life the danger lies, not in any 
tendency to innovation, but in the choice of the 
means for preventing 1 it. And here my apprehen- 
sions point to two opposite errors ; each of which 
deserves a separate notice. The first consists in 
/ a disposition to think, that as the peace of nations 
has been disturbed by the diffusion of a false light, 
it may be re-established by excluding the people 
from all knowledge and all prospect of ameliora- 
tion. O ! never, never ! Reflection and stirrings 
of mind, with all their restlessness, and all the 
errors that result from their imperfection, from the 
Too much, because Too little, are come into the 
world. The powers that awaken and foster the 
spirit of curiosity are to be found in every village : 
books are in every hovel. The infant's cries are 
hushed with picture-books : and the cottager's 
child sheds his first bitter tears over pages, which 
render it impossible for the man to be treated or 
governed as a child. Here as in so many other 
cases, the inconveniences that have arisen from a 
thing's, having become too general are best removed 
by making it universal. 

The other and contrary mistake proceeds from 
the assumption, that a national education will have 
been realized whenever the people at large have 
been taught to read and write. Now t among the 
many means to the desired end, this is doubtless 
one, and not the least important. But neither is 



BELL AND LANCASTER. 241 

it the most so. Much less can it be considered 
to constitute education, which consists in educing 
the faculties and forming- the habits ; the means 
varying according to the sphere in which the indi- 
viduals to be educated are likely to act and become 
useful. I do not hesitate to declare, that whether 
I consider the nature of the discipline adopted,* 
or the plan of poisoning the children of the poor 
with a sort of potential infidelity under the " libe- 
ral idea" of teaching those points only of religious 
faith, in which all denominations agree, I cannot 
but denounce the so called Lancasterian schools 
as pernicious beyond all power of compensation 
by the new acquirement of reading and writing. 
But take even Dr. Bell's original and unsophisti- 
cated plan, which I myself regard as an especial 
gift of Providence to the human race ; and suppose 
this incomparable machine, this vast moral steam- 
engine, to have been adopted and in free motion 
throughout the Empire ; it would yet appear to me 
a most dangerous delusion to rely on it as if this 
of itself formed an efficient national education. 
We cannot, I repeat, honor the scheme too highly 



* See Mr. Southey's Tract on the New or Madras sys- 
tem of education : especially toward the conclusion, where 
with exquisite humour as well as with his usual poignancy 
of wit he has detailed Joseph Lancaster's disciplinarian 
inventions. But even in the schools, that used to be called 
Lancasterian, these are, I believe, discontinued. The true 
perfection of discipline in a school is — the jnaximitm of 
watchfulness with the minimum of punishment. 
II 



242 FEARS AS TO EDUCATION. 

as a prominent and necessary part of the great 
process ; but it will neither supersede nor can it 
be substituted for sundry other measures, that are 
at least equally important. And these are such 
measures, too, as unfortunately involve the necessity 
of sacrifices on the side of the rich and powerful 
more costly and far more difficult than the yearly 
subscription of a few pounds ; — such measures as 
demand more self-denial than the expenditure of 
time in a committee or of eloquence in a public 
meeting*. 

Nay, let Dr. Bell's philanthropic end have been 
realized, and the proposed modicum of learning 
have become universal ; yet convinced of its in- 
sufficiency to stem the strong currents set in from 
an opposite point, I dare not assure myself that it 
may not be driven backward by them and become 
confluent with the evils which it was intended to 
preclude.* 

What other measures I had in contemplation, it 
has been my endeavour to explain elsewhere. 
But I am greatly deceived, if one preliminary to 
an efficient education of the laboring classes be 
not the recurrence to a more manly discipline of 
the intellect on the part of the learned themselves, 
in short a thorough re-casting of the moulds, in 



* See the Report of the House of Commons' Committee 
on the increase of crime ; — within the last twenty years 
quintupled oyer all England, and in several counties de- 
cupled. 28th September, 1828. 



DISCIPLINE OF TIi£ HIGHER CLASSES. 243 

which the minds of our gefitry, the characters of 
our future land-owners, magistrates and senators, 
are to receive their shape and fkshion. O what 
treasures of practical wisdom would\he once more 
brought into open day by the solution of this 
problem ! Suffice it for the present to hint the 
master-thought. The first man, on whom the Ught 
of an idea dawned, did in that same moment Te- 
ceive the spirit and credentials of a law-giver : 
and as long as man shall exist, so long will the 
possession of that antecedent knowledge (the maker 
and master of all profitable experience) which ex- 
ists only in the power of an idea, be the one lawful 
qualification of all dominion in the world of the 
senses. Without this, experience itself is but a 
Cyclops walking backwards under the fascination 
of the past : and we are indebted to a lucky coin- 
cidence of outward circumstances and contingen- 
cies, least of all things to be calculated on in times 
like the present, if this one-eyed experience does 
not seduce its worshipper into practical anachro- 
nisms. 

But alas ! the halls of old philosophy have been 
so long deserted, that we circle them at shy dis- 
tance as the haunt of phantoms and chimseras.* 
The sacred grove of Academus is holden in like 
regard with the unfoodful trees in the shadowy 
world of Maro that had a dream attached to every 
leaf. The very terms of ancient wisdom are worn 

* See App. (E). Ed. 



244 TWO STATES OF MIND 

out, or (far worse !) stamped on baser metal: and 
whoever should have the hardihood to reproclaim 
its solemn trutb/s must commence with a glossary. 

In reviewing the foregoing pages, I am appre- 
hensive th^t they may be thought to resemble the 
overflow; f an earnest mind rather than an orderly 
premeditated composition. Yet this imperfection 
of -'Vorm will not be altogether uncompensated, if it 
should be the means of presenting with greater 
liveliness the feelings and impressions under which 
they were written. Still less shall I regret this 
defect if it should induce some future traveller en- 
gaged in the like journey to take the same station 
and to look through the same medium at the one 
main object which amid all my discursions I have 
still kept in view. The more, however, doth it 
behove me not to conclude this address without 
attempting to recapitulate in as few and as plain 
words as possible the sum and substance of its 
contents. 

There is a state of mind indispensable for all 
perusal of the Scriptures to edification, which must 
be learned by experience, and can be described 
only by negatives. It is the direct opposite of 
that which, if a moral passage of Scripture were 
cited, would prompt a man to reply, " Who does 
not know this ?" But if the quotation should have 
been made in support of some article of faith, this 
same habit of mind will betray itself in different 
individuals, by apparent contraries, which yet are 
but the two poles, or plus and minus states, of the 



INDISPOSING FOR RECEPTION OF TRUTH. 245 

same influence. The latter, or the negative, pole 
may be suspected, as often as you hear a comment 
on some high and doctrinal text introduced with the 
words, " It only means so and so ! " For instance, 
I object to a professed free-thinking Christian the 
following solemn enunciation of the riches of the 
glory of the mystery hid from ages and from 
generations by the philosophic Apostle of the 
Gentiles :— Who (namely, the Father) hath de- 
livered us from the power of darkness and hath 
translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son : 
In whom we have redemption through his blood, 
even the forgiveness of sins : Who is the image 
of the invisible God, the first born* of every 
creature : For by him were all things created, 
that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible 
and invisible, whether they be thrones, or domi- 
nions, or principalities, or powers : all things 
were created by him, and for him : And he is 
before all things, and by him all things consist. 
And he is the head of the body, the Church : 
ruhois the beginning, the firstborn from the dead ; 
that in all things he might have the preeminence. 
For it pleased the Father that in him should all 
fulness dwell : And, having made peace through 
the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all 
things unto himself ; by him, I say, whether 

* A mistaken translation. The words should be : Be- 
gotten before any kind of creation ; and even this does not 
convey the full sense of the superlative, irpioTOTOKOi;. (See 
Table Talk, p. 260. 2nd edit. Ed.) 



246 SCEPTICISM AND SUPERSTITION. 

they be things in earth, or things in heaven. Col, 
i. 13, &c. What is the reply? — Why, that by 
these words (very bold and figurative words it must 
be confessed, yet still) St. Paul only meant that 
the universal and eternal truths of morality and a 
future state had been reproclaimed by an inspired 
teacher and confirmed by miracles !* The words 
only mean, Sir, that a state of retribution after 
this life had been proved by the fact of Christ's 
resurrection — that is all ! 

Of the positive pole, on the other hand, language 
to the following purport is the usual exponent. 
" It is a mystery: and we are bound to believe 
the words without presuming to inquire into the 
meaning of them." That is, we believe in St. 
Paul's veracity; and that is enough. Yet St. 
Paul repeatedly presses on his hearers that thought- 
ful perusal of the Sacred Writings, and those habits 
of earnest though humble inquiry which, if the 
heart only have been previously regenerated, would 
lead them to a full assurance of understanding 
elc zTTiyviovLv, (to an entire assent of the mind ; 



* But I shall scarcely obtain an answer to certain difficul- 
ties involved in this free and liberal interpretation : for ex- 
ample, that with the exception of a handful of rich men con- 
sidered as little better than infidels, the Jews were as fully 
persuaded of these truths as Christians in general are at the 
present day. Moreover that this inspired teacher had him- 
self declared that if the Jews did not believe on the evidence 
of Moses and the Prophets, neither would they though a man 
should rise from the dead. 



st. paul's exhortation to inquiry. 247 

to a spiritual intuition, or positive inward know- 
ledge by experience ) of the mystery of God, and 
of the Father, and of Christ, in which (nempe, 
fivvrnplu) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
knowledge. Col. ii. 2, 3. 

To expose the inconsistency of both these ex- 
tremes, and by inference to recommend that state 
of mind, which looks forward to the fellowship of 
the mystery of the faith as a spirit of wisdom 
and revelation in the knowledge of God, the eyes 
of the understanding being enlightened (Eph. i. 
17 — 18.) — this formed my general purpose. Long 
has it been at my heart ! I consider it as the contra- 
distinguishing principle of Christianity that in it 
alone wag ttXovtoq rfjg TrXnpotyopiag tyjq gvv£(te(j)q 
(the understanding in its utmost power and opu- 
lence) culminates in faith, as in its crown of glory, 
at once its light and its remuneration. On this most 
important point I attempted long ago to preclude, 
if possible, all misconception and misinterpretation 
of my opinions. Alas ! in this time of distress and 
embarrassment the sentiments have a more especial 
interest, a more immediate application, than when 
they were first written. If (I observed)* it be a 
truth attested alike by common feeling and com- 
mon sense, that the greater part of human misery 
depends directly on human vices, and the remainder 
indirectly, by what means can we act on men, so 
as to remove or preclude their vices and purify 

* The Friend, I. p. 134, 3rd edit. Ed. 



248 DIFFUSION OF TRUTH 

their principles of moral election ? The question is 
not by what means each man is to alter his own 
character; — in order to this, all the means pre- 
scribed, and all the aidances given by religion 
may be necessary for him. Vain of themselves 
may be — 

The sayings of the wise 

In ancient and in modern books inroll'd 



Unless he feel within 
Some source of consolation from above, 
Secret refreshings, that repair his strength, 
And fainting spirits uphold. 

Samson Agonistes. 

This is not the question. Virtue would not be 
virtue could it be given by one fellow creature to 
another. To make use of all the means and ap- 
pliances in our power to the actual attainment of 
rectitude, is the abstract of the duty which we owe 
to ourselves : to supply those means as far as we 
can, comprises our duty to others. The question 
then is, what are these means ? Can they be any 
other than the communication of knowledge and 
the removal of those evils and impediments which 
prevent its reception ? It may not be in our power 
to combine both, but it is in the power of every 
man to contribute to the former, who is sufficiently 
informed to feel that it is his duty. If it be said, 
that we should endeavour not so much to remove 
ignorance, as to make the ignorant religious : re- 
ligion herself through her sacred oracles answers 



A CHRISTIAN DUTY. 249 

for me, that all effective faith pre-supposes know- 
ledge and individual conviction. If the mere ac- 
quiescence in truth, tincomprehended and unfa- 
thomed, were sufficient, few indeed would be the 
vicious and the miserable, in this country at least 
where speculative infidelity is, Heaven be praised ! 
confined to a small number. Like bodily defor- 
mity, there is one instance here and another there ; 
but three in one place are already an undue pro- 
portion. It is highly worthy of observation that 
the inspired Writings received by Christians are 
distinguishable from all other books pretending to 
inspiration, from the scriptures of the Bramins, 
and even from the Koran, in their strong and fre- 
quent recommendations of truth. I do not here 
mean veracity, which cannot but be enforced in 
every code which appeals to the religious principle 
of man; but knowledge. This is not only ex- 
tolled as the crown and honor of a man, but to seek 
after it is again and again commanded us as one 
of our most sacred duties. Yea, the very perfec- 
tion and final bliss of the glorified spirit is repre- 
sented by the Apostle as a plain aspect or intui- 
tive beholding of truth in its eternal and immu- 
table source. Not that knowledge can of itself 
do all. The light of religion is not that of the 
moon, light without heat ; but neither is its 
warmth that of the stove, warmth without light. 
Religion is the sun whose warmth indeed swells, 
and stirs, and actuates the life of nature, but who 
at the same time beholds all the growth of life 



250 DIFFUSION OF TRUTH 

with a master-eye, makes all objects glorious on 
which he looks, and by that glory visible to others. 

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Fa- 
ther of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he would 
grant you according to the riches of his glory, 
to he strengthened with might by his Spirit 
in the inner man ; that Christ may dwell in 
your hearts by faith ; that ye being rooted and 
grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with 
all saints what is the breadth, and length, and, 
depth, and heighth ; and to knoiv the love of 
Christ which passeth all knowledge, that ye 
might be filled with the fulness of God. (Eph. 
iii. 14 — 19.) For to know God is (by a vital and 
spiritual act in which to know and to possess are 
one and indivisible) — to know God, I say, is — to 
acknowledge him as the infinite clearness in the 
incomprehensible fulness, and fulness incompre- 
hensible with infinite clearness. 

This then comprises my first purpose, which is 
in a two fold sense general : for in the substance, 
if not in the form, it belongs to all my country- 
men and fellow-Christians without distinction of 
class, while for its object it embraces the whole 
of the inspired Scriptures from the recorded first 
day of heaven and earth, ere the light was yet 
gathered into celestial lamps or reflected from their 
revolving mirrors, to the predicted Sabbath of the 
new creation, when heaven and earth shall have 
become one city with neither sun nor moon to 
shine in it : for the glory of God shall lighten it 



A CHRISTIAN DUTY. 251 

and the Lamb be the light thereof. My second 
purpose is after the same manner in a two fold 
sense specific : for as this Sermon is nominally ad- 
dressed to, so was it for the greater part exclu- 
sively intended for, the perusal of the learned : and 
its object likewise is to urge men so qualified to 
apply their powers and attainments to an especial 
study of the Old Testament as teaching the ele- 
ments of political science. 

It is asked, in what sense I use these words ? 
I answer : in the same sense as the terms are em- 
ployed when we refer to Euclid for the elements 
of the science of geometry, only with one diffe- 
rence arising from the diversity of the subject. 
With one difference only ; but that one how mo- 
mentous ! All other sciences are confined to ab- 
stractions, unless when the term science is used 
in an improper and flattering sense. — Thus we may 
speak without boast of natural history ; but we 
have not yet attained to a science of nature. The 
Bible alone contains a science of realities : and 
therefore each of its elements is at the same time 
a living germ, in which the present involves the 
future, and in the finite the infinite exists poten- 
tially. That hidden mystery in every the mi- 
nutest form of existence, which contemplated 
under the relations of time presents itself to the 
understanding retrospectively, as an infinite ascent 
of causes, and prospectively as an interminable 
progression of effects; — that which contemplated 
in space is beholden intuitively as a law of action 



252 IDEAL TRUTH. 

and re-action, continuous and extending beyond 
all bound; — this same mystery freed from the 
phenomena of time and space, and seen in the 
depth of real being, reveals itself to the pure rea- 
son as the actual immanence or in-being* of all in 
each. Are we struck with admiration at behold- 
ing the cope of heaven imaged in a dew-drop ? 
The least of the animalcula to which that drop 
would be an ocean contains in itself an infinite 
problem of which God omni-present is the only 
solution. The slave of custom is roused by the 
rare and the accidental alone ; but the axioms of 
the unthinking are to the philosopher the deepest 
problems as being the nearest to the mysterious 
root and partaking at once of its darkness and its 
pregnancy. 

O what a mine of undiscovered treasures, what 
a new world of power and truth would the Bible 
promise to our future meditation, if in some gra- 
cious moment one solitary text of all its inspired 
contents should but dawn upon us in the pure un- 
troubled brightness of an idea, that most glorious 
birth of the God-like within us, which even as the 
light, its material symbol, reflects itself from a 
thousand surfaces, and flies homeward to its Pa- 
rent Mind enriched with a thousand forms, itself 
above form and still remaining in its own sim- 



* In-being is the word chosen by Bishop Sherlock to 
express this sense. See his Tract on the Athanasian Creed. 
1827. 



IDEAL TRUTH. 253 

plicity and identity ! O for a flash of that same 
light, in which the first position of geometric 
science that ever loosed itself from the generali- 
zations of a groping and insecure experience, for 
the first time revealed itself to a human intellect 
in all its evidence and all its fruitfulness, trans- 
parence without vacuum, and plenitude without 
opacity ! O that a single gleam of our own in- 
ward experience would make comprehensible to 
us the rapturous Eureka, and the grateful heca- 
tomb, of the philosopher of Samos ; — or that vision 
which from the contemplation of an arithmetical 
harmony rose to the eye of Kepler, presenting the 
planetary world, and all its orbits in the divine 
order of their ranks and distances ; — or which, in 
the falling of an apple, revealed to the ethereal 
intuition of our own Newton the constructive 
principle of the material universe. The promises 
which I have ventured to hold forth concerning 
the hidden treasures of the Law and the Prophets 
will neither be condemned as paradox or as exag- 
geration by the mind that has learned to under- 
stand the possibility, that the reduction of the 
sands of the sea to number should be found a less 
stupendous problem by Archimedes than the simple 
conception of the Parmenidean One. What how- 
ever is achievable by the human understanding 
without this light, may be comprised in the epithet, 
Kevocnr&doL : and a melancholy comment on that 
phrase would the history of human cabinets and 
legislators for the last thirty years furnish ! The 



254 VANITY OF IDEALESS STUDY. 

excellent Barrow, the last of the disciples of Plato 
and Archimedes among our modern mathemati- 
cians, shall give the description and state the 
value : and in his words I shall conclude. 

" Aliud agere, to be impertinently busy, doing 
that which conduceth to no good purpose, is in 
some respect worse than to do nothing. Of such 
industry we may understand that of the Preacher, 
The labor of the foolish ivearieth every one of 
them:' 



APPENDIX. 



257 



APPENDIX, 

CONTAINING COMMENTS AND ESSAYS. 

(A.) 

In this use of the word i sufficiency,' I pre- suppose on 
the part of the reader or hearer an humble and docile state 
of mind, and above all the practice of prayer, as the ne- 
cessary condition of such a state, and the best if not the 
only means of becoming sincere to our own hearts. Chris- 
tianity is especially differenced from all other religions by 
being grounded on facts which all men alike have the same 
means of ascertaining with equal facility, and which no 
man can ascertain for another. Each person must be 
herein querist and respondent to himself; Am I sick, and 
therefore need a physician ? — Am I in spiritual slavery, 
and therefore need a ransomer ? — Have I given a pledge, 
which must be redeemed, and which I cannot redeem by 
my own resources? — Am I at one with God, and is my 
will concentric with that holy power, which is at once the 
constitutive will and the supreme reason of the universe ? 
— If not, must I not be mad if I do not seek, and mise- 
rable if I do not discover and embrace, the means of 
atonement ?* To collect, to weigh, and to appreciate his- 
torical proofs and presumptions is not equally within the 

* This is a mistaken etymology, and consequentlv a dull, 
though unintentional, pun. Our atone is, doubtless, of the 
same stock with the Teutonic aussohnen, versohnen, the Anglo- 
Saxon taking the t for the s. 

S 



258 APPENDIX A. 

means and opportunities of every man. The testimony 
of books of history is one of the strong and stately pillars 
of the Church of Christ; but it is not the foundation, nor 
can it without loss of essential faith be mistaken or sub- 
stituted for the foundation. There is a sect, which in its 
scornful pride of antipathy to mysteries (that is, to all 
those doctrines of the pure and intuitive reason, which 
transcend the understanding, and can never be contem- 
plated by it, but through a false and falsifying perspec- 
tive) affects to condemn all inward and preliminary expe- 
rience as enthusiastic delusion or fanatical contagion. 
Historic evidence, on the other hand, these men treat, as 
the Jews of old treated the brazen serpent, which was the 
relic and evidence of the miracles worked by Moses in 
the wilderness. They turned it into an idol : and there- 
fore Hezekiah {who clave to the Lord, and did right in 
the sight of the Lord, so that after him was none like him, 
among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before 
him) not only removed the high places, and brake the ima- 
ges, and cut down the groves ; but likewise brake in pieces 
the brazen serpent thai Moses had made : for the children 
of Israel did burn incense to it. (2 Rings xviii.) 

To preclude an error so pernicious, I request that to 
the wilful neglect of those outward ministrations of the 
word which all Englishmen have the privilege of attend- 
ing, the reader will add the setting at nought likewise of 
those inward means of grace, without which the language 
of the Scriptures, in the most faithful translation and in the 
purest and plainest English, must nevertheless continue 
to be a dead language, — a sun-dial by moonlight. 

(B.) 
Reason and Religion differ only as a two-fold applica- 
tion of the same power. But if we are obliged to distin- 
guish, we must ideally separate. In this sense I affirm 
that reason is the knowledge of the laws of the whole 



APPENDIX B. 259 

considered as one: and as such it is contradistinguished 
from the understanding, which concerns itself exclusively 
with the quantities, qualities, and relations of particulars 
in time and space. The understanding, therefore, is the 
science of phenomena, and of their subsumption under 
distinct kinds and sorts, (genera and species.) Its func- 
tions supply the rules and constitute the possibility of ex- 
perience ; but remain mere logical forms, except as far as 
materials are given by the senses or sensations. The rea- 
son, on the other hand, is the science of the universal, 
having the ideas of oneness and allness as its two elements 
or primary factors. In the language of the old Schools, 
Unity -(- Omneity = Totality. 

The reason first manifests itself in man by the tendency "\ 
to the comprehension of all as one. We can neither rest 
in an infinite that is not at the same time a whole, nor in 
a whole that is not infinite. Hence the natural man is 
always in a state either of resistance or of captivity to the 
understanding and the fancy, which cannot represent tota- 
tality without limit : and he either loses the one in the 
striving after the infinite, that is, atheism with or without 
polytheism, or he loses the infinite in the striving after the 
one, and then sinks into anthropomorphic monotheism. 

The rational instinct, therefore, taken abstractedly and 
unbalanced, did, in itself, (ye shall be as gods, Gen. hi. 5.) 
and in its consequences, (the lusts of the flesh, the eye, and 
the understanding, as in v. .5.) form the original tempta- 
tion, through which man fell : and in all ages has con- 
tinued to originate the same, even from Adam, in whom 
we all fell, to the atheists who deified the human reason in 
the person of a harlot during the earlier period of the 
French Revolution. 

To this tendency, therefore, religion, as the conside- 
ration of the particular and individual, (in which respect it 
takes up and identifies with itself the excellence of the 
understanding) but of the individual, as it exists and has 



260 APPENDIX B. 

its being in the universal (in which respect it is one with 
the pure reason,) — to this tendency, I say, religion assigns 
the due limits, and is the echo of the voice of the Lord 
God wcdking in the garden. Hence in all the ages and 
countries of civilization religion has been the parent and 
fosterer of the fine arts, as of poetry, music, painting, and 
the like, the common essence of which consists in a similar 
union of the universal and the individual. In this union, 
moreover, is contained the true sense of the ideal. Under 
the old Law the altar, the curtains, the priestly vestments, 
and whatever else was to represent the beauty of holiness, 
had an ideal character : and the Temple itself was a 
master-piece of ideal beauty. 

There exists in the human being, at least in man fully 
developed, no mean symbol of tri-unity in reason, reli- 
gion, and the will. For each of the three, though a dis- 
tinct agency, implies and demands the other two, and 
loses its own nature at the moment that from distinction it 
passes into division or separation. The perfect frame of 
a man is the perfect frame of a state : and in the light of 
this idea we must read Plato's Republic* 

The comprehension, impartiality, and far-sightedness of 
reason, (the legislative of our nature) taken singly and ex- 
clusively, becomes mere visionariness in intellect, and in- 
dolence or hard-heartedness in morals. It is the science of 
cosmopolitism without country, of philanthropy without 
neighbourliness or consanguinity, in short, of all the im- 
postures of that philosophy of the French Revolution, 
which would sacrifice each to the shadowy idol of all. For 
Jacobinism is monstrum hybridum, made up in part of 
despotism, or the lust of rule grounded in selfness ; and 
in part of abstract reason misapplied to objects that be- 

■ * If I judge rightly, this celebrated work is to ' The 
History of the Town of Man-soul,' what Plato was to John 
Bunyan. 



APPENDIX B. 261 

long entirely to experience and the understanding. Its 
instincts and mode of action are in strict correspondence 
with its origin. In all places, Jacobinism betrays its 
mixed parentage and nature by applying to the brute 
passions and physical force of the multitude (that is, to 
man as a mere animal,) in order to build up government 
and the frame of society on natural rights instead of social 
privileges, on the universals of abstract reason instead of 
positive institutions, the lights of specific experience, and 
the modifications of existing circumstances. Right in its 
most proper sense is the creature of law and statute, and 
only in the technical language of the courts has it any 
substantial and independent sense. In morals, right is a 
word without meaning except as the correlative of duty. 

From all this it follows, that reason as the science of all 
as a whole must be interpenetrated by a power, that repre- 
sents the concentration of all in each — a power that acts 
by a contraction of universal truths into individual duties, 
such contraction being the only form in which those truths 
can attain life and reality. Now this is religion, which is 
the executive of our nature, and .on this account the name 
of highest dignity, and the symbol of sovereignty. To the 
same purport I have elsewhere defined religion as philo- 
sophy evolved from idea into act and fact by the superin- 
duction of the extrinsic conditions of reality. 

Yet even religion itself, if ever in its too exclusive de- 
votion to the specific and individual it neglects to inter- 
pose the contemplation of the universal, changes its being 
into superstition, and becoming more and more earthly 
and servile, as more and more estranged from the one in 
all, goes wandering at length with its pack of amulets, 
bead-rolls, periapts, fetisches, and the like pedlary, on 
pilgrimages to Loretto, Mecca, or the temple of Jagger- 
naut, arm in arm with sensuality on one side and self-tor- 
ture on the other, followed by a motley group of friars, 
pardoners, faquirs, gamesters, flagellants, mountebanks, 
and harlots. 



262 APPENDIX B. 

But neither can reason or religion exist or co-exist as 
reason and religion, except as far as they are actuated by 
the will (the Platonic 0vjudc) which is the sustaining, 
coercive and ministerial power, the functions of which in 
the individual correspond to the officers of war and police 
in the ideal Republic of Plato. In its state of immanence 
or indwelling in reason and religion, the will appears in- 
differently as wisdom or as love : two names of the same 
power, the former more intelligential, the latter more spi- 
ritual, the former more frequent in the Old, the latter in 
the New, Testament But in its utmost abstraction and 
consequent state of reprobation, the will becomes Satanic 
pride and rebellious self-idolatry in the relations of the 
spirit to itself, and remorseless despotism relatively to 
others; the more hopeless as the more obdurate by its 
subjugation of sensual impulses, by its superiority to toil 
and pain and pleasure ; in short, by the fearful resolve to 
find in itself alone the one absolute motive of action, 
under which all other motives from within and from with- 
out must be either subordinated or crushed. 

This is the character which Milton has so philosophi- 
cally as well as sublimely embodied in the Satan of his 
Paradise Lost. Alas ! too often has it been embodied in 
real life. Too often has it given a dark and savage gran- 
deur to the historic page. And wherever it has appeared, 
under whatever circumstances of time and country, the 
same ingredients have gone to its composition ; and it has 
been identified by the same attributes. Hope in which 
there is no cheerfulness; stedfastness within and im- 
movable resolve, with outward restlessness and whirling 
activity ; violence with guile ; temerity with cunning ; and, 
as the result of all, interminableness of object with perfect 
indifference of means; these are the qualities that have 
constituted the commanding genius ; these are the marks, 
that have characterized the masters of mischief, the liber- 
ticides, and mighty hunters of mankind, from Nimrod to 



APPENDIX B. 263 

Buonaparte. And from inattention to the possibility of 
such a character as well as from ignorance of its elements, 
even men of honest intentions too frequently become fa- 
scinated. Nay, whole nations have been so far duped 
by this want of insight and reflection as to regard with 
palliative admiration, instead of wonder and abhorrence, 
the Molochs of human nature, who are indebted for the 
larger portion of their meteoric success to their total want 
of principle, and who surpass the generality of their fellow 
creatures in one act of courage only, that of daring to say 
with their whole heart, ' Evil, be thou my good !' — All 
system so far is power; and a systematic criminal, self- 
consistent and entire in wickedness, who entrenches vil- 
lany within villany, and barricadoes crime by crime, has 
removed a world of obstacles by the mere decision, that 
he will have no obstacles, but those of force and brute 
matter. 

I have only to add a few sentences, in completion of this 
comment, on the conscience* and on the understanding. 
The conscience is neither reason, religion, or will, but an 
experience sui generis of the coincidence of the human 
will with reason and religion. It might, perhaps, be 
called a spiritual sensation ; but that there lurks a contra- 
diction in the terms, and that it is often deceptive to give 
a common or generic name to that, which being unique, 
can have no fair analogy. In strictness, therefore, the 
conscience is neither a sensation nor a sense ; but a testi- 
fying state, best described in the words of Scripture, as 
the peace of God that passeth all understanding. 



* I have this morning read with high delight an ad- 
mirable representation of what men in general think, and 
what ought to be thought, concerning the conscience in the 
translation of Swedenborg's Universal Theology of the New 
Church. II. p. 361—370. 6 January, 1821. 



264 APPENDIX B. 

Of the latter faculty, namely, of the understanding, con- 
sidered in and of itself the Peripatetic aphorism, nihil in 
intellectu quod non prius in sensu, is strictly true, as well 
as the legal maxim, de rebus non apparentibus et non ex~ 
istentibus eadem est ratio. The eye is not more inappro- 
priate to sound, than the mere understanding to the modes 
and laws of spiritual existence. In this sense I have 
used the term ; and in this sense I assert that the under- 
standing or experiential faculty, unirradiated by the reason 
and the spirit, has no appropriate object but the material 
world in relation to our worldly interests. The far-sighted 
prudence of man, and the more narrow but at the same 
time far less fallible cunning of the fox, are both no other 
than a nobler substitute for salt, in order that the hog may 
not putrefy before its destined hpur. 

It must not, however, be overlooked that this insula- 
tion of the understanding is our own act and deed. The 
man of healthful and undivided intellect uses his under- 
standing* in this state of abstraction only as a tool or 



* Perhaps the safer use of the term, understanding, for 
general purposes, is, to take it as the mind, or rather as the 
man himself considered as aconcipient as well as percipient 
being, and reason as a power supervening. The want of a 
clear notion respecting the nature of reason may be traced 
to the difficulty of combining the notion of an organ of sense, 
or a new sense, with the notion of the appropriate and pe- 
culiar objects of that sense, so that the idea evolved from 
this synthesis shall be the identity of both. By reason we 
know that God is : but God is himself the Supreme Reason. 
And this is the proper difference between all spiritual facul- 
ties and the bodily senses ; — the organs of spiritual ap- 
prehension having objects consubstantial with themselves 
(6fioov(Tia), or being themselves their own objects, that is, 
self- contemplative. 



APPENDIX B. 265 

organ ; even as the arithmetician uses numbers, that is, as 
the means not the end of knowledge. Our Shakspeare 
in agreement both with truth and the philosophy of his 
age names it " discourse of reason," as an instrumental 
faculty belonging to reason : and Milton opposes the dis- 
cursive to the intuitive, as the lower to the higher, 

Differing: but in decree, in kind the same. 



Reason may or rather must be used in two different yet 
correlative senses, which are nevertheless in some measure 
reunited by a third. In its highest sense, and which is the 
ground and source of the rest, reason is being, the Supreme 
Being contemplated objectively, and in abstraction from the 
personality. The Word or Logos is life, and communicates 
life j is light and communicates light. Now this light con- 
templated in abstracto is reason. Again as constituents of 
reason we necessarily contemplate unity and distinctly. 
Now the latter as the polar opposite to the former implies 
plurality : therefore I use the plural, distinctities, and say, 
that the distinctities considered apart from the unity are the 
ideas, and reason is the ground and source of ideas. This 
is the first and absolute sense. 

The second sense comes when we speak of ourselves as 
possessing reason ; and this we can no otherwise define 
than as the capability with which God had endowed man of 
beholding, or being conscious of, the divine light. But 
this very capability is itself that light, not as the divine 
light, but as the life or indwelling of the living Word, 
which is our light ; that is, a life whereby we are capable 
of the light, and by which the light is present to us, as a 
being which we may call ours, but which I cannot call 
mine : for it is the life that we individualize, while the 
light, as its correlative opposite, remains universal. 

Most pregnant is the doctrine of opposite correlatives as 
applied to Deity, but only as manifested in man, not to the 
Godhead absolutely 1827. 



266 APPENDIX B. 

Of the discursive understanding, which forms for itself 
general notions and terms of classification for the purpose 
of comparing and arranging phenomena, the characteristic 
is clearness without depth. It contemplates the unity of 
things in their limits only, and is consequently a know- 
ledge of superficies without substance. So much so in- 
deed, that it entangles itself in contradictions in the very 
effort of comprehending the idea of substance. The com- 
pleting power which unites clearness with depth, the ple- 
nitude of the sense with the comprehensibility of the un- 
derstanding, is the imagination, impregnated with which 
the understanding itself becomes intuitive, and a living 
power. The reason, (not the abstract reason, not the 
reason as the mere organ of science, or as the faculty of 
scientific principles and schemes a priori ; but reason) as 
the integral spirit of the regenerated man, reason substan- 
tiated and vital, one only, yet manifold, overseeing all, 
and going through all understanding; the breath of the 
power of God, and a pure influence from the glory of the 
Almighty ; which remaining in itself regenerateth all other 
powers, and in all ages entering into holy souls maketh 
them friends of God and prophets ; (Wisdom of Solomon, 
c. vii.) this reason without being either the sense, the 
understanding or the imagination, contains all three with- 
in itself, even as the mind contains its thoughts, and is 
present in and through them all; or as the expression 
pervades the different features of an intelligent coun- 
tenance. Each individual must bear witness of it to his 
own mind, even as he describes life and light : and with 
the silence of light it describes itself, and dwells in us 
only as far as we dwell in it. It cannot in strict language 
be called a faculty, much less a personal property, of any 
human mind. He, with whom it is present, can as little 
appropriate it, whether, totally or by partition, as he can 
claim ownership in the breathing air or make an inclosure 
in the cope of heaven. 



APPENDIX B. 267 

The object of the preceding discourse was to recom- 
mend the Bible, as the end and centre of our reading and 
meditation. I can truly affirm of myself, that my studies 
have been profitable and availing to me only so far as I 
have endeavoured to use all my other knowledge as a 
glass enabling me to receive more light in a wider field 
of vision from the word of God. If you have accompa- 
nied me thus far, thoughtful reader, let it not weary you 
if I digress for a few moments to another book, likewise a 
revelation of God— the great book of his servant Nature. 
That in its obvious sense and literal interpretation it de- 
clares the being and attributes of the Almighty Father, 
none but the fool in heart has ever dared gainsay. But 
it has been the music of gentle and pious minds in all 
ages, it is the poetry of all human nature, to read it like- 
wise in a figurative sense, and to find therein correspon- 
dencies and symbols of the spiritual world. 

I have at this moment before me, in the flowery mea- 
dow, on which my eye is now reposing, one of its most 
soothing chapters, in which there is no lamenting word, 
no one character of guilt or anguish. For never can I look 
and meditate on the vegetable creation without a feeling 
similar to that with which we gaze at a beautiful infant 
that has fed itself asleep at its mother's bosom, and smiles 
in its strange dream of obscure yet happy sensations. The 
same tender and genial pleasure takes possession of me, 
and this pleasure is checked and drawn inward by the 
like aching melancholy, by the same whispered remon- 
strance, and made restless by a similar impulse of aspira- 
tion. It seems as if the soul said to herself: From this 
state hast thou fallen ! Such shouldst thou still become, 
thy self all permeable to a holier power! thy self at once 
hidden and glorified by its own transparency, as the ac- 
cidental and dividuous in this quiet and harmonious ob- 
ject is subjected to the life and light of nature ; to that 
life and light of nature, I say, which shines in every plant 



268 APPENDIX B. 

and flower, even as the transmitted power, love and wis- 
dom of God over all fills, and shines through, nature ! 
But what the plant is by an act not its own and uncon- 
sciously — that must thou make thyself to become — must 
by prayer and by a watchful and unresisting spirit, join 
at least with the preventive and assisting grace to make 
thyself, in that light of conscience which inflameth not, 
and with that knowledge which puffeth not up ! 

But further, and with particular reference to that un- 
divided reason, neither merely speculative or merely 
practical, but both in one, which I have in this annota- 
tion endeavoured to contra-distinguish from the under- 
standing, I seem to myself to behold in the quiet objects, 
on which I am gazing, more than an arbitrary illustration, 
more than a mere simile, the work of my own fancy. I 
feel an awe, as if there were before my eyes the same power 
as that of the reason — the same power in a lower dignity, 
and therefore a symbol established in the truth of things. 
I feel it alike, whether I contemplate a single tree or 
flower, or meditate on vegetation throughout the world, 
as one of the great organs of the life of nature. Lo !* — 
with the rising sun it commences its outward life and 
enters into open communion with all the elements, at once 
assimilating them to itself and to each other. At the same 
moment it strikes its roots and unfolds its leaves, absorbs 
and respires, steams forth its cooling vapour and finer 



* The remainder of this paragraph mi'ght properly form 
the conclusion of a disquisition on the spirit, as suggested 
by meditative observation of natural objects, and of our own 
thoughts and impulses without reference to any theological 
dogma, or any religious obligation to receive it as a revealed 
truth, but traced to the law of the dependence of the parti- 
cular on the universal, the first being the organ of the se- 
cond, as the lungs in relation to the atmosphere, the eye to 
light, crystal to fluid, figure to space, and the like. 1822. 



APPENDIX B. 269 

fragrance, and breathes a repairing spirit, at once the food 
and tone of the atmosphere, into the atmosphere that feeds 
it. Lo ! — at the touch of light how it returns an air akm 
to light, and yet with the same pulse effectuates its own 
secret growth, still contracting to fix what expanding it 
had refined. Lo! — how upholding the ceaseless plastic 
motion of the parts in the profoundest rest of the whole 
it becomes the visible organismus of the entire silent or 
elementary life of nature and, therefore, in incorporating 
the one extreme becomes the symbol of the other; the 
natural symbol of that higher life of reason, in which the 
whole series (known to us in our present state of being) 
is perfected, in which, therefore, all the subordinate gra- 
dations recur, and are re-ordained in more abundant 
honor. We had seen each in its own cast, and we now 
recognize them all as co-existing in the unity of a higher 
form, the crown and completion of the earthly, and the 
mediator of a new and heavenly series.* Thus finally, 

* It may he shown that the plus or universal, which man 
as the minus or individual finds his correlative pole, can 
only be God. I. This may he proved, exhaustively, that 
all lower universals are already attached to lower particu- 
lars. II. It may he proved by the necessity of harmonic 
correspondence. The principle of personal individuality 
being the transcendent — (that is, the highest species of genus 
X, in which X rises, moritur, at dum moritur resurgit, into 
the higher genus Y,) — the personal principle, I say, being- 
the transcendent of all particulars, requires for its corres- 
pondent opposite the transcendent of all univeisals : and 
this is God. The doctrine of the spirit thus generally con- 
ceived, and without being matured into any more distinct 
conceptions by revealed Scripture, is the ground of theo- 
pathy, religious feeling, or devoutness : while the reason, 
— as contra-distinguished from the understanding by logical 
processes, without reference to revelation or to reason sensu 
eminenti, as the self-subsistent Reason or Logos, and merely 



270 APPENDIX B. 

the vegetable creation, in the simplicity and uniformity of 
its internal structure symbolizing the unity of nature, 
while it represents the omniformity of her delegated func- 
tions in its external variety and manifoldness, becomes the 
record and chronicle of her ministerial acts, and inchases 
the vast unfolded volume of the earth with the hierogly- 
phics of her history. 

O ! — if as the plant to the orient beam, we would but 
open out our minds to that holier light, which c being com- 
pared with light is found before it, more beautiful than 
the sun, and above all the order of stars, 7 (Wisdom of 
Solomon, vii. 29.) — ungenial, alien, and adverse to our 
very nature would appear the boastful wisdom which, be- 
ginning in France, gradually tampered with the taste and 
literature of all the most civilized nations of Christendom, 
seducing the understanding from its natural allegiance, 
and therewith from all its own lawful claims, titles, and 
privileges. It was placed as a ward of honour in the 

considered as the endowment of the human will and mind, 
having two definitions accordingly as it is exercised prac- 
tically or intellectually, — is the ground of theology, or reli- 
gious belief. Both are good in themselves as far as they 
go, and productive — the former — of a sensibility to the 
beautiful in art and nature, of imaginativeness and moral 
enthusiasm; — the latter — of insight, comprehension, and a 
philosophic mind. They are good in themselves, and the 
preconditions of the better ; and therefore these disquisi- 
tions would form an appropriate conclusion to The Aids to 
Reflection. For as many as are wanting either in leisure 
or inclination, or belief of their own competency to go further 
— from the miscellaneous to the systematic — that volume is 
a whole, and for them the whole work. While for others 
these disquisitions form the drawbridge, the connecting 
link, between the disciplinary and preparatory rules and 
exercises of reflection, and the system of faith and philo- 
sophy of S. T. C. 1827. 



APPENDIX ?>. 271 

courts of faith and reason ; but it chose to dwell alone, 
and became a harlot by the way-side. The commercial 
spirit, and the ascendancy of the experimental philosophy 
which took place at the close of the seventeenth century, 
though both good and beneficial in their own kinds, com- 
bined to foster its corruption. Flattered and dazzled by 
the real or supposed discoveries which it had made, the 
more the understanding was enriched, the more did it 
become debased ; till science itself put on a selfish and 
sensual character, and immediate utility, in exclusive re- 
ference to the gratification of the wants and appetites of 
the animal, the vanities and caprices of the social, and 
the ambition of the political, man w T as imposed as the test 
of all intellectual powers and pursuits. Worth was de- 
graded into a lazy synonyme of value ; and value was 
exclusively attached to the interest of the senses. But 
though the growing alienation and self-sufficiency of the 
understanding was perceptible at an earlier period, yet it 
seems to have been about the middle of the last century, 
under the influence of Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot, say 
generally of the so-called Encyclopedists, and alas !— of 
their crowned proselytes and disciples, Frederick, Joseph, 
and Catherine, — that the human understanding, and this 
too in its narrowest form, was tempted to throw off all 
show of reverence to the spiritual and even to the moral 
powers and impulses of the soul ; and usurping the name 
of reason openly joined the banners of Anti-christ, at once 
the pander and the prostitute of sensuality, and whether 
in the cabinet, laboratory, the dissecting room, or the 
brothel, alike busy in the schemes of vice and irreligion. 
Well and truly might it, thus personified in our fancy, 
have been addressed in the words of the evangelical Pro- 
phet, which I have once before quoted. Thou hast said. 
None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath 
perverted thee — and thou hast said in thy heart, I am, and 
there is none beside me. (Isaiah, xlvii. 10.) 



272 APPENDIX B. 

Prurient, bustling, and revolutionary, this French wis- 
dom has never more than grazed the surfaces of know- 
ledge. As political economy, in its zeal for the increase 
of food it habitually overlooked the qualities and even the 
sensations of those that were to feed on it. As ethical 
philosophy, it recognized no duties which it could not 
reduce into debtor and creditor accounts on the ledgers of 
self-love, where no coin was sterling which could not 
be rendered into agreeable sensations. And even in its 
height of self-complacency as chemical art, greatly am I 
deceived if it has not from the very beginning mistaken 
the products of destruction, cadavera rerum, for the ele- 
ments of composition : and most assuredly it has dearly 
purchased a few brilliant inventions at the loss of all com- 
munion with life and the spirit of nature. As the pro- 
cess, such the result; — a heartless frivolity alternating 
with a sentimentality as heartless ; an ignorant contempt 
of antiquity ; a neglect of moral self-discipline; a deaden- 
ing of the religious sense, even in the less reflecting forms 
of natural piety ; a scornful reprobation of all consola- 
tions and secret refreshings from above, — and as the caput 
mortuum of human nature evaporated, a French nature of 
rapacity, levity, ferocity, and presumption. 

Man of understanding, canst thou command the stone 
to lie, canst thou bid the flower bloom, where thou hast 
placed it in thy classification ? — Canst thou persuade the 
living or the inanimate to stand separate even as thou 
hast separated them? — And do not far rather all things 
spread out before thee in glad confusion and heedless in- 
termixture, even as a lightsome chaos on which the Spirit 
of God is moving ? — Do not all press and swell under 
one attraction, and live together in promiscuous harmony, 
each joyous in its own kind, and in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of myriad others that in the system of thy un- 
derstanding are distant as the poles? — If to mint and 
to remember names delight thee, still arrange and classify 



APPENDIX B. 273 

and pore and pull to pieces, and peep into death to look 
for life, as raonkies put their hands behind a looking- 
glass ! Yet consider in the first sabbath which thou im- 
posest on the busy discursion of thought, that all this is 
at best little more than a technical memory : that like 
can only be known by like: that as truth is the correla- 
tive of being, so is the act of being the great organ of 
truth: that in natural no less than in moral science, 
quantum sumus, scimus. 

That which we find in ourselves is (gradu mutato) the 
substance and the life of all our knowledge. Without this 
latent presence of the ' I am/ all modes of existence in 
the external world would flit before us as colored shadows, 
with no greater depth, root, or fixure, than the image of a 
rock hath in a gliding stream or the rainbow^on a fast- 
sailing rain-storm. The human mind is the compass, in 
which the laws and actuations of all outward essences are 
revealed as the dips and declinations. (The application 
of geometry to the forces and movements of the material 
world is both proof and instance.) The fact, therefore, 
that the mind of man in its own primary and constituent 
forms represents the laws of nature, is a mystery whicn 
of itself should suffice to make us religious : for it is a 
problem of which God is the only solution, God, the one 
before all, and of all, and through all ! — True natural 
philosophy is comprized in the study of the science and 
language of symbols. The power delegated to nature is 
all in every part : and by a symbol I mean, not a meta- 
phor or allegory or any other figure of speech or form of 
fancy, but an actual and essential part of that, the whole 
of which it represents. Thus our Lord speaks symboli- 
cally when he says that the eye is the light of the body. 
The genuine naturalist is dramatic poet in his own line : 
and such as our myriad-minded Shakspeare is, compared 
with the Racines and Metastasios, such and by a similar 
process of self-transformation would the man be, com- 

T 



274 APPENDIX B. 

pared with the doctors of the mechanic school, who should 
construct his physiology on the heaven-descended, Know 
Thyself. 

Even the visions of the night speak to us of powers 
within us that are not dreamt of in their day-dream of 
philosophy. The dreams, which we most often remember, 
are produced by the nascent sensations and inward mo- 
tiuncula (the fluxions) of the waking state. Hence, too 
they are more capable of being remembered, because 
passing more gradually into our waking thoughts they are 
more likely to associate with our first perceptions after 
sleep. Accordingly, when the nervous system is ap- 
proaching to the waking state, a sort of under-conscious- 
ness blends with our dreams, that in all we imagine as 
seen or heard our own self is the ventriloquist, and 
moves the slides in the magic- lantern. We dream about 
things. 

But there are few persons of tender feelings and re- 
flecting habits, who have not, more or less often in the 
course of their lives, experienced dreams of a very different 
kind, and during the profoundest sleep that is compatible 
with after-recollection, — states, of which it would scarcely 
be too bold to say that we dream the things themselves ; 
so exact, minute, and vivid beyond all power of ordinary 
memory is the portraiture, so marvellously perfect is our 
brief metempsychosis into the very being, as it were, of the 
person who seems to address us. The dullest wight is at 
times a Shakspeare in his dreams. Not only may we 
expect that men of strong religious feelings, but little re- 
ligious knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to regard 
such occurrences as supernatural visitations ; but it ought 
not to surprise us, if such dreams should sometimes be 
confirmed by the event, as though they had actually pos- 
sessed a character of divination. For who shall decide, 
how far a perfect reminiscence of past experiences, (of 
many perhaps that had escaped our reflex consciousness 



APPENDIX B. 275 

at the time) — who shall determine, to what extent this 
reproductive imagination, unsophisticated by the will, and 
undistracted by intrusions from the senses, may or may 
not be concentered and sublimed into foresight and pre- 
sentiment ? — There would be nothing herein either to 
foster superstition on the one hand, or to justify contemp- 
tuous disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but credulity 
seen fiom behind, bowing and nodding assent to the ha- 
bitual and the fashionable. 

To the touch (or feeling) belongs the proximate; to 
the eye the distant. Now little as I might be disposed 
to believe, I should be still less inclined to ridicule, the 
conjecture that in the recesses of our nature, and unde- 
veloped, there might exist an inner sense, (and therefore 
appertaining wholly to time,) — a sense hitherto without a 
name, which as a higher third combined and potentially 
included both the former. Thus gravitation combines and 
includes the powers of attraction and repulsion, which 
are the constituents of matter, as distinguished from body . 
And thus, not as a compound, but as a higher third, it 
realizes matter (of itself ens Jiuxionale et prafluum) and 
constitutes it body. Now suppose that this nameless 
inner sense stood to the relations of time as the power of 
gravitation to those of space ? A priori, a presence to 
the future is not more mysterious or transcendant than a 
presence to the distant, than a power equally immediate 
to the most remote objects, as it is to the central mass of 
its own body, toward which it seems, as it were, enchant- 
ing them : for instance, the gravity in the sun and moon 
to the spring tides of our ocean. The true reply to such 
an hypothesis would be, that as there is nothing to be said 
against its possibility, there is, likewise, nothing to be 
urged for its reality ; and that the facts may be rationally 
explained without it. 

It has been asked why knowing myself to be the object 
of personal slander, (slander as unprovoked as it is ground- 



276 APPENDIX B. 

less, unless acts of kindness are provocation) I furnish 
this material for it by pleading in palliation of so chime- 
rical a fancy. With that half-playful sadness, which at 
once sighs and smiles, I answered : why not for that very 
reason ? — namely, in order that my calumniator might 
have, if not a material, yet some basis for the poison-gas 
of his invention to combine with ? — But no, — pure false- 
hood is often for the time the most eifective ; for how can 
a man confute what he can only contradict? — Our opi- 
nions and principles cannot prove an alibi. Think only 
what your feelings would be if you heard a wretch deli- 
berately perjure himself in support of an infamous accu- 
sation, so remote from all fact, so smooth and homogene- 
ous in its untruth, such a round Robin of mere lies, that 
you knew not which to begin with ? — What could you 
do, but look round with horror and astonishment, plead- 
ing silently to human nature itself, — and perhaps (as hath 
really been the case with me) forget both the slanderer and 
his slander in the anguish inflicted by the passiveness of 
your many professed friends, whose characters you had 
ever been as eager to clear from the least stain of reproach 
as if a coal of fire had been on your own skin ? — But 
enough of this which would not have occurred to me at 
all, at this time, had it not been thus suggested. 

The feeling, which in point of fact chiefly influenced 
me in the preceding half apology for the supposition of a 
divining power in the human mind, arose out of the con- 
viction that an age or nation may become free from certain 
prejudices, beliefs, and superstitious practices in two 
ways. It may have really risen above them; or it may 
have fallen below them, and become too bad for their 
continuance. The rustic would have little reason to 
thank the philosopher who should give him true concep- 
tions of ghosts, omens, dreams, and presentiments at the 
price of abandoning his faith in Providence and in the 
continued existence of his fellow-creatures after their death. 



APPENDIX B. 277 

The teeth of the old serpent sowed by the Cadmuses of 
French literature under Lewis XV. produced a plenteous 
crop of such philosophers and truth-trumpeters in the 
reign of his ill-fated successor. They taught many facts, 
historical, political, physiological, and ecclesiastical, dif- 
fusing their notions so widely that the very ladies and 
hair-dressers of Paris became fluent encyclopedists ; and 
the sole price, which their scholars paid for these treasures 
of new light, was to believe Christianity an imposture, the 
Scriptures a forgery, the worship of God superstition, hell 
a fable, heaven a dream, our life without providence, and 
our death without hope. What can be conceived more 
natural than the result, that self-acknowledged beasts 
should first act, and next suffer themselves to be treated, 
as beasts ? 

Thank heaven ! — notwithstanding the attempts of Tho- 
mas Payne and his compeers, it is not so bad with us. 
Open infidelity has ceased to be a means even of gratify- 
ing vanity: for the leaders of the gang themselves turned 
apostates to Satan, as soon as the number of their prose- 
lytes became so large that atheism ceased to give distinc- 
tion. Nay, it became a mark of original thinking to de- 
fend the Creed and the Ten Commandments: so the 
strong minds veered round, and religion came again into 
fashion. But still I exceedingly doubt, whether the su- 
perannuation of sundry superstitious fancies be the result 
of any real diffusion of sound thinking in the nation at 
large. For instance, there is now no call for a Picus 
Mirandula to write seven books against astrology. It 
might seem, indeed, that a single fact like that of the loss 
of Kempenfeldt and his crew, or the explosion of the ship 
U Orient, would prove to the common sense of the most 
ignorant, that even if astrology could be true, the astrolo- 
gers must be false : for if such a science were possible it 
could be a science only for gods. Yet Erasmus, the 
prince of sound common sense, is known to have disap- 



278 APPENDIX B. 

proved of his friend's hardihood, and did not himself ven- 
ture beyond scepticism : and the immortal Newton, to 
whom more than to any othe human being Europe owes 
the purification of its general notions concerning the hea- 
venly bodies, studied astrology with much earnestness and 
did not reject it till he had demonstrated the falsehood of 
all its pretended grounds and principles. The exit of two 
or three superstitions is no more a proof of the entry of 
good sense, than the strangling of a despot at Algiers or 
Constantinople is a symptom of freedom. If therefore 
not the mere disbelief, but the grounds of such dibelief 
must decide the question of our superior illumination, I 
confess that I could not from my own observations on the 
books and conversation of the age vote for the affirmative 
without much hesitation. As many errors are despised 
by men from ignorance as from knowledge. Whether 
that be not the case with regard to divination, is a query 
that rises in my mind (notwithstanding my fullest convic- 
tion of the non-existence of such a power) as often as I 
read the names of the great statesmen and philosophers, 
which Cicero enumerates in the introductory paragraphs of 
his work de Divinatione. — Socrates, omnesque Socratici, 
* * * plurimlsque locis gravis auctor Democritus, * * * 
Cratippusque, familiar 'is noster, quern ego par em summis 
Peripateticisjudico, * * * * prasensionem rerumfuturarum 
comprobarunt* Of all the theistic philosophers, Xeno- 
phanes was the only one who wholly rejected it. A Stoicis 
degeneravit Panotitis, nee tamen ausus est negare vim esse 
divinandi, sed dubitare se dixit. f Nor was this a mere out- 
ward assent to the opinions of the State. Many of them 
subjected the question to the most exquisite arguments, 
and supported the affirmative not merely by experience, 
but (especially the Stoics, who of all the sects most culti- 
vated psychology) by a minute analysis of human nature 

* L. I. s. 2. Ed. t lb. Ed. 



APPENDIX B. 279 

and its faculties: while on the mind of Cicero himself (as 
on that of Plato with regard to a state of retribution after 
death) the universality of the faith in all times and countries 
appears to have made the deepest impression. Gentem 
quidem nullam video, neque tarn humanam atque doctam, 
neque tarn immanent tamque barbaram, qua non significari 
Jutura, et a quibusdam intelligi pradicique posse censeat* 
I fear that the decrease in our feelings of reverence to- 
wards mankind at large, and our increasing aversion to 
every opinion not grounded in some appeal to the senses, 
have a larger share in this our emancipation from the pre- 
judices of Socrates and Cicero, than reflection, insight, 
or a fair collation of the facts and arguments. For myself, 
I would much rather see the English people at large believe 
somewhat too much than merely just enough, if the latter is 
to be produced, or must be accompanied, by a contempt 
or neglect of the faith and intellect of their forefathers. 
For not to say, what yet is most certain, that a people can- 
not believe just enough, and that there are errors which no 
wise man will treat with rudeness, w T hile there is a proba- 
bility that they may be the refraction of some great truth 
as yet below the horizon ; it remains most worthy of our 
serious consideration, whether a fancied superiority to 
their ancestors' intellects must not be speedily followed in 
the popular mind by disrespect for their ancestors' institu- 
tions. Assuredly it is not easy to place any confidence in 
a form of Church or State, of the founders of which we have 
been taught to believe that their philosophy was jargon, 
and their feelings and notions rank superstition. Yet are 
we never to grow wiser? — Are we to be credulous by 
birth-right, and take ghosts, omens, visions, and witch- 
craft, as an heir-loom? — God forbid. A distinction 
must be made, and such a one as shall be equally availing 
and profitable to men of all ranks. Is this practicable ? — 

* L. I. s. l. Ed. 



280 APPENDIX B. 

Yes ! — it exists. It is found in the study of the Old and 
New Testament, if only it be combined with a spiritual 
partaking of the Redeemer's Blood, of which, mysterious 
as the symbol may be, the sacramental Wine is no mere 
or arbitrary memento. This is the only certain, and this 
is the universal, preventive of all debasing superstitions ; 
this is the true Haemony, (al/xa, blood, oivoq, wine) 
which our Milton has beautifully allegorized in a passage 
strangely overlooked by all his commentators. Bear in 
mind, reader ! the character of a militant Christian, and 
the results (in this life and in the next) of the Redemption 
by the Blood of Christ; and so peruse the passage: — 

Amongst the rest a small unsightly root, 

But of divine effect, he culled me out : 

The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, 

But in another country, as he said, 

Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil ! 

Unknown and like esteem'd, and the dull swain 

Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon ; 

And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly 

That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave. 

He called it Haemony and gave it me, 

And bade me keep it as of sovran use 

'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp, 

Or ghastly furies' apparition. Comus. 

These lines might -be employed as an amulet against 
delusions : for the man, who is indeed a Christian, will 
as little think of informing himself concerning the future 
by dreams or presentiments, as of looking for a distant 
object at broad noon-day with a lighted taper in his hand. 

But whatever of good and intellectual our nature worketh 
in us, it is our appointed task to render gradually our own 
work. For all things that surround us, and all things 
that happen unto us, have (each doubtless its own provi- 
dential purpose, but) all one common final cause : namely, 



APPENDIX B. 281 

the increase ot consciousness in such wise that whatever 
part of the terra incognita of our nature the increased 
consciousness discovers, our will may conquer and bring 
into subjection to itself under the sovereignty of reason. 

The leading differences between mechanic and vital 
philosophy may all be drawn from one point : namely, 
that the former demanding for every mode and act of ex- 
istence real or possible visibility, knows only of distance 
and nearness, composition (or rather juxta-position) and 
decomposition, in short the relations of unproductive par- 
ticles to each other; so that in every instance the result is 
the exact sum of the component quantities, as in arith- 
metical addition. This is the philosophy of death, and 
only of a dead nature can it hold good. In life, much 
more in spirit, and in a living and spiritual philosophy, 
the two component counter-powers actually interpenetrate 
each other, and generate a higher third, including both 
the former, ita tamen ut sit alia et major. 

To apply this to the subject of this present comment. 
The elements (the factors, as it were) of religion are reason 
and understanding. If the composition stopped in itself, 
an understanding thus rationalized would lead to the 
admission of the general doctrines of natural religion, the 
belief of a God, and of immortality ; and probably to an 
acquiescence in the history and ethics of the Gospel. But 
still it would be a speculative faith, and in the nature of 
a theory ; as if the main object of religion were to solve 
difficulties for the satisfaction of the intellect. Now this 
state of mind, which alas ! is the state of too many among 
our self-entitled rational religionists, is a mere balance or 
compromise of the two powers, not that living and gene- 
rative interpenetration of both which would give being to 
essential religion, — to the religion at the birth of which 
we receive the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, 
Father; the Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit, 
that we are the children of God. (Rom. viii. 15, 16.) 



282 APPENDIX B. 

In religion there is no abstraction. To the unity and in- 
finity of the Divine Nature, of which it is the partaker, it 
adds the fullness, and to the fullness, the grace and the 
creative overflowing. That which intuitively it at once 
beholds and adores, praying always, and rejoicing always 
— that doth it tend to become. In all things and in each 
thing — for the Almighty Goodness doth not create gene- 
ralities or abide in abstractions — in each, the meanest, 
object it bears witness to a mystery of infinite solution. 
Thus beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, it is 
changed into the same image from glory to glory. (2 Cor. 
iii. 18.) For as it is born and not made, so must it grow. 
As it is the image or symbol of its great object, by the 
organ of this similitude, as by an eye, it seeth that same 
image throughout the creation ; and from the same cause 
sympathizeth with all creation in its groans to be redeemed. 
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and tra- 
vaileth in earnest expectation (Rom. viii. 20 — 23) of a 
renewal of its forfeited power, the power, namely, of re- 
tiring into that image, which is its substantial form and 
true life, from the vanity of self, which then only is when 
for itself it hath ceased to be. Even so doth religion 
finitely express the unity of the infinite Spirit by being a 
total act of the soul. And even so doth it represent his 
fullness by its depth, by its substantiality, and by an all- 
pervading vital warmth which — relaxing the rigid, conso- 
lidating the dissolute, and giving cohesion to that which 
is about to sink down and fall abroad, as into the dust 
and crumble of the grave — is a life within life, evermore 
organizing the soul anew. 

Nor doth it express the fullness only of the Spirit. It 
likewise represents his overflowing by its communicative- 
ness, budding and blossoming forth in all earnestness of 
persuasion, and in all words of sound doctrine : while, 
like the citron in a genial soil and climate, it bears a 
golden fruitage of good- works at the same time, the ex- 



APPENDIX B. 283 

ample waxing in contact with the exhortation, as the ripe 
orange beside the opening orange-flower. Yea, even his 
creativeness doth it shadow out by its own powers of im- 
pregnation and production, (being such a one as Paul the 
aged, and also a prisoner for Jesus Christ, icho begat to 
a lively hope his son Onesimus in his bonds) regenerating 
in and through the Spirit the slaves of corruption, and 
fugitives from a far greater and harder master than Phile- 
mon. The love of God, and therefore God himself who 
is love, religion strives to express by love, and measures 
its growth by the increase and activity of its love. For 
Christian love is the last and divinest birth, the harmony, 
unity, and god-like transfiguration of all the vital, intel- 
lectual, moral, and spiritual powers. Now it manifests 
itself as the sparkling and ebullient spring of well-doing 
in gifts and in labors ; and now as a silent fountain of 
patience and long-suffering, the fulness of which no hatred 
or persecution can exhaust or diminish ; a more than con- 
queror in the persuasion, that neither death, nor life, nor 
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature, shall be able to separate it from the love of God 
which is in Christ Jesus the Lord. (Rom. viii. 38, 39.) 
From God's love through his Son, crucified for us from 
the beginning of the world, religion begins : and in love 
towards God and the creatures of God it hath its end 
and completion. O, how heaven-like it is to sit among 
brethren at the feet of a minister who speaks under the 
influence of love and is heard under the same influence ! 
For all abiding and spiritual knowledge, infused into a 
grateful and affectionate fellow Christian, is as the child 
of the mind that infuses it. The delight which he gives 
he receives ; and in that bright and liberal hour the glad- 
dened preacher can scarce gather the ripe produce of to- 
day without discovering and looking forward to the green 
fruits and embryons, the heritage and reversionary wealth 



284 APPENDIX C. 

of the days to come ; till he bursts forth in prayer and 
thanksgiving — The harvest truly is -plenteous, but the la- 
bourers few, gracious Lord of the harvest, send forth 
labourers into thy harvest ! There is no difference be- 
tween the Jew and the Greek, Thou, Lord over all, art 
rich to all that call upon thee. But how shall they call 
on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall 
they believe in him of whom they have not heard ? and 
how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall 
they preach except they be sent ? And ! how beautiful 
upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good 
tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth glad tidings 
of good things, that publisheth salvation ; that saith unto 
the captive soul, Thy God reigneth ! God manifested in 
the flesh hath redeemed thee ! O Lord of the harvest, 
send forth labourers into thy harvest. 

Join with me, reader ! in the fervent prayer that we 
may seek within us what we can never find elsewhere, 
that we may find within us what no words can put there, 
that one only true religion, which elevateth knowing into 
being, which is at once the science of being, and the being 
and the life of all genuine science. 

(C.) 

Not without great hesitation should I express a suspi- 
cion concerning the genuineness of any the least im- 
portant passage in the New Testament, unless I could 
adduce the most conclusive evidence from the earliest 
manuscripts and commentators, in support of its interpo- 
lation : well knowing that such permission has already 
opened a door to the most fearful license. It is indeed, in 
its consequences, no less than an assumed right of picking 
and chusing our religion out of the Scriptures. Most 
assuredly I would never hazard a suggestion of this kind 
in any instance in which the retention or the omission of 
the words could make the slightest difference with regard 



APPENDIX C. 285 

to fact, miracle, or precept. Still less would I start the 
question, where the hypothesis of their interpolation could 
be wrested to the discountenancing of any article of 
doctrine concerning which dissension existed : no, not 
though the doubt or disbelief of the doctrine had been 
confined to those, whose faith few but themselves would 
honor with the name of Christianity ; however reluctant 
we might be, both from the courtesies of social life and 
the nobler charities of humility, to withhold from the 
persons themselves the title of Christians. 

But as there is nothing in Matthew xii. 40. which 
would fall within this general rule, I dare permit myself 
to propose the query, whether there does not exist internal 
evidence of its being a gloss of some unlearned, though 
pious, Christian of the first century, which has slipt into 
the text ? The following are my reasons. 1 . It is at all 
events a comment on the w r ords of our Saviour, and no 
part of his speech. 2. It interrupts the course and breaks 
down the application of our Lord's argument, as addressed 
to men who from their unwillingness to sacrifice their vain 
traditions, gainful hypocrisy, and pride both of heart and 
of demeanor, demanded a miracle for the confirmation of 
moral truths that must have borne witness to their own 
divinity in the consciences of all who had not rendered 
themselves conscience-proof. 3. The text strictly taken 
is irreconcilable with the fact as it is afterwards related, 
and as it is universally accepted. I at least remember 
no calculation of time, according to which the interspace 
from Friday evening to the earliest dawn of Sunday morn- 
ing, could be represented as three days and three nights. 
As three days our Saviour himself speaks of it (John ii. 
19) and so it would be described in common language as 
well as according to the use of the Jews; but I can find 
no other part of Scripture which authorizes the phrase of 
three nights. This gloss is not found either in the repe- 
tition of the circumstance by Matthew himself (xvi. 4.) 



286 APPENDIX D. 

nor in Mark, (viii. 12.) nor in Luke, (xii. 54.) Mark's 
narration doth indeed most strikingly confirm my second 
reason, drawn from the purpose of our Saviour's argu- 
ment : for the allusion to the prophet Jonas is omitted 
altogether, and the refusal therefore rests on the depravity 
of the applicants, as proved by the wantonness of the ap- 
plication itself. All signs must have been useless to such 
men as long as the great sign of the times, the call to 
repentance, remained without effect. 4. The gloss cor- 
responds with the known fondness of the earlier Jewish 
converts, and indeed of the Christians in general of the 
first century, to bring out in detail and into exact square 
every accommodation of the Old Testament, which they 
either found in the Gospels, or made for themselves. It 
is. too notorious into what strange fancies, (not always at 
safe distance from dangerous errors) the oldest uninspired 
writers of Christian Church were seduced by this passion 
of transmuting without Scriptural authority incidents, names 
and even mere sounds of the Hebrew Scriptures, into Evan- 
gelical types and correspondencies. 

An additional reason may perhaps occur to those who 
alone would be qualified to appreciate its force : namely, 
to Biblical scholars familiar with the opinions and argu- 
ments of sundry doctors, Rabbinical as well as Christian, 
respecting the first and second chapter of Jonah. 

(D.) 

In all ages of the Christian Church, and in the later 
period of the Jewish (that is, as soon as from their ac- 
quaintance first with the Oriental, and afterwards with 
the Greek, philosophy the precursory and preparative in- 
fluences of the Gospel began to work) there have existed 
individuals (Laodiceans in spirit, minims in faith, and 
nominalists in philosophy) who mistake outlines for sub- 
stance, and distinct images for clear conceptions ; with 
whom therefore not to be a thing is the same as not to be 



APPENDIX D. 287 

at all . The contempt in which such persons hold the 
works and doctrines of all theologians before Grotius, and 
of all philosophers before Locke and Hartley (at least 
before Bacon and Hobbes) is not accidental, nor yet alto- 
gether owing to that epidemic of a proud ignorance occa- 
sioned by a diffused sciolism, which gave a sickly and 
hectic shewiness to the latter half of the last century. It 
is a real instinct of self-defence acting offensively by an- 
ticipation. For the authority of all the greatest names of 
antiquity is full and decisive against them ; and man, by 
the very nature of his birth and growth, is so much the 
creature of authority, that there is no way of effectually 
resisting it, but by undermining the reverence for the past 
in toto. Thus, the Jewish Prophets have, forsooth, a cer- 
tain degree of antiquarian value, as being the only spe- 
cimens extant of the oracles of a barbarous tribe; the 
Evangelists are to be interpreted with a due allowance 
for their superstitious prejudices concerning evil spirits, 
and St, Paul never suffers them to forget that he had 
been brought up at the feet of a Jewish Rabbi ! The 
Greeks indeed were a fine people in works of taste ; but 
as to their philosophers — the writings of Plato are smoke 
and flash from the witch's cauldron of a disturbed imagi- 
nation : — Aristotle's works a quickset hedge of fruitless 
and thorny distinctions ; and all the philosophers before 
Plato and Aristotle fablers and allegorizers ! 

But these men have had their day : and there are signs 
of the times clearly announcing that that day is verging to 
its close. Even now there are not a few, on whose con- 
victions it will not be uninfluencive to know, that the 
power, by which men are led to the truth of things, in- 
stead of the appearances, was deemed and entitled the 
living and substantial Word of God by the soundest of 
the Hebrew Doctors ; that the eldest and most profound 
of the Greek philosophers demanded assent to their 
doctrine, mainly as ootyia $eo7rapddoTOG, that is, a tradi- 



288 APPENDIX D. 

tionary wisdom that had its origin in inspiration; that 
these men referred the same power to the wvp dei^wov 
v7t6 dioiKovvroQ Aoyov ; and that they were scarcely less 
express than their scholar Philo Judaeus, in their affir- 
mations of the Logos, as no mere attribute or quality, no 
mode of abstraction, no personification, but literally and 
mysteriously Deus alter et idem. 

When education has disciplined the minds of our 
gentry for austerer study ; when educated men shall be 
ashamed to look abroad for truths that can be only found 
within ; within themselves they will discover, intuitively 
will they discover, the distinctions between the light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world ; and the 
understanding, which forms the peculium of each man, 
as different in extent and value from another man's un- 
derstanding, as his estate may be from his neighbour's 
estate. The words of St. John, i. 7—12. are in their 
whole extent interpretable of the understanding, which 
derives its rank and mode of being in the human race 
(that is, as far as it may be contrasted with the in- 
stinct of the dog or elephant, in all, which constitutes it 
human understanding) from the universal light. This 
light therefore comes as to its own. Being rejected, it 
leaves the understanding to a world of dreams and dark- 
ness : for in it alone is life and the life is the light of 
men. What then but apparitions can remain to a philo- 
sophy, which strikes death through all things visible and 
invisible; satisfies itself then only when it can explain 
those abstractions of the outward senses, which by an 
unconscious irony it names indifferently facts and pha- 
Tiomena, mechanically — that is, by the laws of death ; 
and brands with the name of mysticism every solution 
grounded in life, or the powers and intuitions of life ? 

On the other hand, if the light be received by faith, to 
such understandings it delegates the privilege (s%ov<jiav) to 
become sons of God, expanding while it elevates, even 



APPENDIX D. 289 

as the beams of the sun incorporate with the mist, and 
make its natural darkness and earthly nature the bearer 
and interpreter of their own glory. 'Eav fir] iriGTEvarrrt, 
ov fir) Gvvrjre. 

The very same truth is found in a fragment of the 
Ephesian Heraclitus, preserved by Stobaeus. Bvv voo^ 
Xeyovrag laxvpi^scr^aL %p?) r<£ Zvviji 7rdvTU)V Tp'scpovrai 
yap 7ravrsQ oi dvSpwTuvot vooi virb kvbq rov Seiov (Aoyov) 
Kparel yap togovtov okogov tSeXei, Kal kZ,apK£i izdai ical 
Trepiyiverai.* — To discourse rationally (if we would ren- 
der the discursive understanding discourse of reason) it 
behoves us to derive strength from that which is common 
to all men; (the light that lighteth every man.) For all 
human understandings are nourished by the one Divine 
Word, whose power is commensurate with his will, and 
is sufficient for all and overnoweth, (shineth in darkness, 
and is not contained therein, or comprehended by the 
darkness.) 

This was Heraclitus, whose book is nearly six hundred 
years older than the Gospel of St. John, and who was 
proverbially entitled the Dark (6 gkotuvoq.) But it was a 
darkness which Socrates would not condemn^ and which 
would probably appear to enlightened Christians the dark- 
ness of prophecy, had the work, which he hid in the 
temple, been preserved to us. But obscurity is a word 
of many meanings. It may be in the subject ; it maybe 
in the author; or it maybe in the reader; — and this again 
may originate in the state of the reader's heart; or in 
that of his capacity; or in his temper; or in his acci- 

* Serm. III. Ed. 

t Diogenes Laertius has preserved the characteristic cri- 
ticism of Socrates. &a<ji d' Evpnridnv avro) Sovra rov 
f HpaK\eirov (jvyypafifia, tpsGOai, Tt Soxti ; rov de dxxvai, 
"Afxev (TvvrJKa, yevvala' olfiai Ce, Kal a fir) Gvvr\Ka % 7rXr)v 
AyXiov yk tivoq dttrai KoXvfiflrirov. II. v. 7. Ed. 
u 



290 APPENDIX D. 

dental associations. Two kinds are especially pointed 
out by the divine Plato in his Sophistes. The beauty of 
the original is beyond my reach. On my anxiety to give 
the fulness of the thought, I must ground my excuse for 
construing rather than translating. The fidelity of the 
version may well atone for its harshness in a passage that 
deserves a meditation beyond the ministry of words, even 
the words of Plato himself, though in them, or rlo where, 
are to be heard the sweet sounds, that issued from the 
head of Memnon at the touch of light. — " One thing is 
the hardness to be understood of the sophist, another that 
of the philosopher. The former retreating into the ob- 
scurity of that which hath not true being, (tov /x?) ovtoq) 
and by long intercourse accustomed to the same, is hard 
to be known on account of the duskiness of the place. 
But the philosopher by contemplation of pure reason 
evermore approximating to the idea of true being {tov 
ovtoq) is by no means easy to be seen on account of the 
splendor of that region. For the intellectual eyes of the 
many flit, and are incapable of looking fixedly toward the 
God-like."* 

* The passage is : — 

JEJE. Tov per Srj (pikoGotyov ev toiovtlj) tivi romp Kai 
vvv Kai tireiTa dvevpYiaofiev, lav ZrjTiufiev, ideiv fiev 
XaXe-trov evapywQ Kai tovtov, 'irepov jjlijv tookov i] ts 

TOV G6(pl(JT0V XaktTTOTriQ 1] TE TOVTOV, 

9EAI. naic; 

JEJE. 'O vlv aTrodidpaffKuv eig ti)v tov jirj ovtoq cr/cortt- 
voTrjTa, Tpifiy TtpoaairTofievoQ avTrjg, did to gkoteivov 
tov tottov KaTavorjcrai xaXEirog. i] yap ; 

0EAI. "l&OLKEV. 

{SJE. '0 8i ye QiXovotyog, Ty tov ovtoq del Old Xoyiffjxojv 
TTpocriceifievoQ ids$, did to Xafjnrpbv av ttjq x^9 a G ovda- 
fi&g evTTETrJQ 6$9rjvar Ta yap tyjq r&v ttoXXojv ip v XWG 
o/jLliaTa KapTepeiv 7rpbg to Qelov atyop&VTa ddvvaTa, 
s. 84.— Ed. 



APPENDIX D. 291 

There are, I am aware, persons who willingly admit, 
that not in articles of faith alone, but in the heights of 
geometry, and even in the necessary first principles of 
natural philosophy, there exist truths of apodictic force in 
reason, which the mere understanding strives in vain to 
comprehend. Take, as an instance, the descending series 
of infinites in every finite, a position which involves a 
contradiction for the understanding, yet follows demon- 
strably from the very definition of body, as that which 
fills a space. For wherever there is a space filled, there 
must be an extension to be divided. When therefore 
maxims generalized from appearances (phenomena) are 
applied to substances; when rules, abstracted or de- 
duced from forms in time and space, are used as measures 
of spiritual being, yea even of the Divine Nature which 
cannot be compared or classed; (For my thoughts are 
not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the 
Lord. Isaiah lv. 8.) — such professors cannot but protest 
against the whole process, as grounded on a gross meta- 
basis eig aWo yevog. Yet still they are disposed to tole- 
rate it as a sort of sanative counter-excitement, that holds 
in check the more dangerous disease of Methodism. But 
I more than doubt of both the positions. I do not think 
Methodism, Calvinistic or Wesleyan, the more dangerous 
disease ; and even if it were, I should deny that it is at 
all likely to be counteracted by the rational Christianity 
of our modern Alogi (\6yog 7ri<rrewg ciXoyog !) who, mis- 
taking unity for sameness, have been pleased by a mis- 
nomer not less contradictory to their own tenets than in- 
tolerant to those of Christians in general, to entitle them- 
selves Unitarians. The two contagions attack each a 
wholly different class of minds and tempers, and each 
tends to produce and justify the other, accordingly as the 
predisposition of the patient may chance to be. If fa- 
naticism be as a fire in the flooring of the Church, the 
idolism of the unspiritualized understanding is the dry 



292 APPENDIX E. 

rot in its beams and timbers. "l/3pu/ xpV afizvvvetv 
uaWov r} 7rvpKairiv, says Heraclitus.* It is not the sect 
of Unitarian Dissenters, but the spirit of Unitarianism in 
the members of the Church that alarms me. To what 
open revilings, and to what whispered slanders, I subject 
my name by this public avowal, I well know : awiaTovg 
ydp Tivag elvai ewKTrixjxov 'Hpa/cXftro^, <pn<nv, aKovcrai 
ovk S7Ti^afjLsvovg ovd' direiv dWa Kai, Kvveg tig, flav'Cov- 
civ ov av fir} yivwGKioffi. 

(E.) 

The accomplished author of the Arcadia, the star of 
serenest brilliance in the glorious constellation of Eliza- 
beth's court, our England's Sir Philip Sidney, the para- 
mount gentleman of Europe, the poet, warrior, and states- 
man, held high converse with Spenser on the idea of su- 
persensual beauty ; on all " earthly fair and amiable," as 
the symbol of that idea ; and on music and poesy as its 
living educts. With the same genial reverence did the 
younger Algernon commune with Harrington and Milton 
on the idea of a perfect State ; and in what sense it is 
true, that the men (that is, the aggregate of the inhabitants 
of a country at any one time) are made for the State, not 
the State for the men. But these lights shine no longer, 
or for a few. Exeunt : and enter in their stead Holo- 
fernes and Costard, masked as Metaphysics and Com- 
mon-sense. And these too have their ideas. The former 
has an idea that Hume, Hartley, and Condillac have ex- 
ploded all ideas, but those of sensation; he has an idea 
that he was particularly pleased with the fine idea of the 
last-named philosopher, that there is no absurdity in 
asking What color virtue is of? inasmuch as the proper 
philosophic answers would be black, blue, or bottle-green, 
according as the coat, waistcoat and small-clothes might 

* Diog. Laert. ix. 1. Ed. 



APPENDIX E. 293 

chance to be of the person, the series of whose motions 
had excited the sensations, which formed our idea of vir- 
tue. The latter has no idea of a better-flavored haunch 
of venison than he dined off at the Albion. He admits 
that the French have an excellent idea of cooking in ge- 
neral, but holds that their best cooks have no more idea 
of dressing a turtle than the gourmands themselves, at 
Paris, have any real idea of the true taste and color of 
the fat. 

It is not impossible that a portion of the high value 
attached of late years to the dates and margins of our old 
folios and quartos may be transferred to their contents. 
Even now there exists a shrewd suspicion in the minds of 
reading men. that not only Plato and Aristotle, but even 
Scotus Erigena,* and the schoolmen from Peter Lombardf 
to Duns Scotus,^; are not such mere blockheads, as they 
pass for with those who have never perused a line of their 
writings. What the results may be, should this ripen into 
conviction, I can but guess. But all history seems to 
favor the persuasion I entertain, that in every age the 
speculative philosophy in general acceptance, the meta- 
physical opinions that happen to be predominant, will 
influence the theology of that age. Whatever is proposed 
for the belief, as true, must have been previously admitted 
by reason as possible, as involving no contradiction to 
the universal forms or laws of thought, no incompatibility 
in the terms of the proposition ; and the determination on 
this head belongs exclusively to the science of metaphy- 
sics. In each article of faith embraced on conviction, 
the mind determines, first intuitively on its logical possi- 
bility ; secondly, discursively, on its analogy to doctrines 
already believed, as well as on its correspondence to the 

* He died at Oxford in 886. Ed. 

t He died Bishop of Paris in 1164. Ed. 

t He died in 1308. Ed. 



294 APPENDIX E. 

wants and faculties of our nature ; and thirdly, histori- 
cally, on the direct and indirect evidences. But the pro- 
bability of an event is a part of its historic evidence, and 
constitutes its presumptive proof, or the evidence a priori. 
Now as the degree of evidence a posteriori, requisite in 
order to a satisfactory proof of the actual occurrence of 
any fact stands, in an inverse ratio to the strength or 
weakness of the evidence a priori (that is, a fact pro- 
bable in itself may be believed on slight testimony) ; it is 
manifest that of the three factors, by which the mind is 
determined to the admission or rejection of the point in 
question, the last, the historical, must be greatly influenced 
by the second, analogy, and that both depend on the first, 
logical congruity, not indeed as their cause or preconsti- 
tuent, but as their indispensable condition ; so that the 
very inquiry concerning them is preposterous {g6§ig\jlcl 
tov v<?spov TTooTtoov) as long as the first remains unde- 
termined. Again: the history of human opinions (eccle- 
siastical and philosophical history) confirms by manifold 
instances, what attentive consideration of the position itself 
might have authorized us to presume, namely, that on all 
such subjects as are out of the sphere of the senses, and 
therefore incapable of a direct proof from outward expe- 
rience, the question whether any given position is logi- 
cally impossible (incompatible with reason) or only in- 
comprehensible (that is, not reducible to the forms of 
sense, namely, time and space, or those of the under- 
standing, namely, quantity, quality, and relation) in other 
words, the question, whether an assertion be in itself in- 
conceivable, or only by us unimaginable, will be decided 
by each individual according to the positions assumed as 
first principles in the metaphysical system which he has 
previously adopted. Thus the existence of a Supreme 
Reason, the creator of the material universe, involved a 
contradiction for a disciple of Epicurus, who had con- 
vinced himself that causative thought was tantamount to 



APPENDIX E. 295 

something out of nothing or substance out of shadow, and 
incompatible with the axiom Nihil ex nihilo : While on 
the contrary to a Platonist this position, that thought or 
mind essentially, vel sensu eminenti, is causative, is neces- 
sarily pre-supposed in every other truth, as that without 
which every fact of experience would involve a contra- 
diction in reason. Now it is not denied that the framers 
of our Church Liturgy, Homilies and Articles, entertained 
metaphysical opinions irreconcilable in their first prin- 
ciples with the system of speculative philosophy which 
has been taught in this country, and only not universally 
received, since the asserted and generally believed defeat 
of the Bishop of Worcester (the excellent Stillingfleet) in 
his famous controversy with Mr. Locke. Assuredly 
therefore it is well worth the consideration of our Clergy 
whether it is at all probable in itself, or congruous with 
experience, that the disputed Articles of our Church de 
revelaiis et eredendis should be adopted with singleness of 
heart, and in the light of knowledge, when the grounds 
and first philosophy, on which the framers themselves 
rested the antecedent credibility (may we not add even 
the revelability ?) of the Articles in question, have been 
exchanged for principles the most dissimilar, if not con- 
trary ? It may be said and truly, that the Scriptures, and 
not metaphysical systems, are our best and ultimate au- 
thority. And doubtless, on Revelation must we rely 
for the truth of the doctrines. Yet what is considered in- 
capable of being conceived as possible, will be deemed 
incapable of having been revealed as real : and that phi- 
losophy has hitherto had a negative voice, as to the inter- 
pretation of the Scriptures in high and doctrinal points, 
is proved by the course of argument adopted in the con- 
troversial Volumes of all the orthodox divines from Origen 
to Bishop Bull, as well as by the very different sense at- 
tached to the same texts by the disciples of the modern 
metaphysique, wherever they have been at liberty to form 
their own creeds according to their own expositions. 



296 APPENDIX E. 

I repeat the question then : is it likely, that the faith of 
our ancestors will be retained when their philosophy is 
rejected, — rejected a priories baseless notions not worth 
inquiring into, as obsolete errors which it would be slay- 
ing the slain to confute ? Should the answer be in the 
negative, it would be no strained inference that the Clergy 
at least, as the conservators of the national faith, and the 
accredited representatives of learning in general amongst 
us, might with great advantage to their own peace of 
mind qualify themselves to judge for themselves concern- 
ing the comparative worth and solidity of the two schemes. 
Let them make the experiment, whether a patient re- 
hearing of their predecessors' cause, with enough of predi- 
lection for the men to counterpoise the prejudices against 
their system, might not induce them to move for a new 
trial ; — a result of no mean importance in my opinion, 
were it on this account alone, that it would recall certain 
ex-dignitaries in the book-republic from their long exile 
on the shelves of our public libraries to their old familiar 
station on the reading desks of our theological students. 
However strong the presumption were in favor of prin- 
ciples authorized by names that must needs be so dear 
and venerable to a minister of the Church in England, as 
those of Hooker, Whitaker, Field, Donne, Selden, Stil- 
lingfleet, — (masculine intellects, formed under the robust 
discipline of an age memorable for keenness of research, 
and iron industry) — yet no undue preponderance from 
any previous weight in this scale will be apprehended by 
minds capable of estimating the counter-weights, which 
it must first bring to a balance in the scale opposite. The 
obstinacy of opinions that have always been taken for 
granted, opinions unassailable even by the remembrance 
of a doubt, the silent accrescence of belief from the un- 
watched depositions of a general, never-contradicted, 
hearsay; the concurring suffrage of modern books, all 
pre-supposing or re-asserting the same principles with the 



APPENDIX E. 297 

same confidence, and with the same contempt for all 
prior systems ; — and among these, works of highest au- 
thority, appealed to in our Legislature, and lectured on at 
our Universities; the very books, perhaps, that called 
forth our own first efforts in thinking ; the solutions and 
confutations in which must therefore have appeared ten- 
fold more satisfactory from their having given us our first 
information of the difficulties to be solved, of the opinions 
to be confuted. — Verily, a clergyman's partiality towards 
the tenets of his forefathers must be intense beyond all 
precedent, if it can more than sustain itself against an- 
tagonists so strong in themselves, and with such mighty 
adjuncts. 

Nor in this enumeration dare I (though fully aware of 
the obloquy to which I am exposing myself) omit the 
noticeable fact, that we have attached a portion even of 
our national glory (not only to the system itself, that sys- 
tem of disguised and decorous Epicureanism, which has 
been the only orthodox philosophy of the last hundred 
years ; but also, and more emphatically) to the name of 
the assumed father of the system, who raised it to its pre- 
sent pride of place, and almost universal acceptance 
throughout Europe. And how was this effected ? Ex- 
trinsically, by all the causes, consequences, and accom- 
paniments of the Revolution in 1688 : by all the opinions, 
interests, and passions, which counteracted by the sturdy 
prejudices of the mal-contents with the Revolution ; 
qualified by the compromising character of its chief con- 
ductors ; not more propelled by the spirit of enterprise 
and hazard in our commercial towns, than kept in check 
by the characteristic vis inertia of the peasantry and land- 
holders; both parties cooled and lessoned by the equal 
failure of the destruction, and of the restoration, of mo- 
narchy ; — it was effected extrinsically, I say, by the same 
influences, which — (not in and of themselves, but with all 
these and sundry other modifications) — combined under 



298 APPENDIX E. 

an especial control of Providence to perfect and secure 
the majestic temple of the British Constitution : — but the 
very same which in France, without this providential 
counterpoise, overthrew the motley fabric of feudal op- 
pression to build up in its stead the madhouse of Jaco- 
binism . Intrinsically, and as far as the philosophic scheme 
itself is alone concerned, it was effected by the mixed 
policy and bonhommie, with which the author contrived to 
retain in his celebrated work whatever the system pos- 
sesses of soothing for the indolence, and of flattering for 
the vanity, of men's average understandings : while he 
kept out of sight all its darker features which outrage the 
instinctive faith and moral feelings of mankind, ingeni- 
ously threading-on the dried and shrivelled, yet still 
wholesome and nutritious, fruits plucked from the rich 
grafts of ancient wisdom, to the barren and worse than 
barren fig tree of the mechanic philosophy. Thus, the 
sensible Christians, the angels of the church of Laodicea, 
with the numerous and mighty sect of their admirers, de- 
lighted with the discovery that they could purchase the 
decencies and the creditableness of religion at so small 
an expenditure of faith, extolled the work for its pious 
conclusions : while the infidels, wiser in their generation 
than the children (at least than these nominal children) of 
light, eulogized it with no less zeal for the sake of its 
principles and assumptions, and with the foresight of 
those obvious and only legitimate conclusions, that might 
and would be deduced from them. Great at all times 
and almost incalculable are the influences of party spirit 
in exaggerating contemporary reputation ; but never per- 
haps from the first syllable of recorded time were they 
exerted under such a concurrence and conjunction of 
fortunate accidents, of helping and furthering events and 
circumstances, as in the instance of Mr. Locke. 

I am most fully persuaded, that the principles both 
of taste, morals, and religion taught in our most popular 



APPENDIX E. 299 

compendia of moral and political philosophy, natural the- 
ology, evidences of Christianity, and the like, are false, 
injurious, and debasing. But I am likewise not less 
deeply convinced that all the well-meant attacks on the 
writings of modern infidels and heretics, in support either 
of the miracles or of the mysteries of the Christian reli- 
gion, can be of no permanent utility, while the authors 
themselves join in the vulgar appeal to common sense as 
the one infallible judge in matters, which become subjects 
of philosophy only, because they involve a contradiction 
between this common sense and our moral instincts, and 
require therefore an arbiter, which containing both ewi- 
nenter must be higher than either. We but mow down 
the rank misgrowth instead of cleansing the soil, as long 
as we ourselves protect and manure, as the pride of our 
garden, a tree of false knowledge, which looks fair and 
shewy and variegated with fruits not its own, that hang 
from the branches which have at various times been in- 
grafted on its stem ; but from the roots of which under 
ground the runners are sent off, that shoot up at a distance 
and bring forth the true and natural crop. I will speak 
plainly, though in so doing I must bid defiance to all the 
flatterers of the folly and foolish self-opinion of the half- 
instructed many. The articles of our Church, and the 
true principles of government and social order, will never 
be effectually and consistently maintained against their 
antagonists till the champions have themselves ceased to 
worship the same Baal with their enemies, till they have 
cast out the common idol from the recesses of their own 
convictions, and with it the whole service and ceremonial 
of idolism. While all parties agree in their abjuration 
of Plato and Aristotle, and in their contemptuous neglect 
of the Schoolmen and the scholastic logic, without which 
the excellent Selden (that genuine English mind whose 
erudition, broad, deep, and manifold as it was, is yet less 
remarkable than his robust healthful common sense) af- 



300 APPENDIX E. 

firms it impossible for a divine thoroughly to comprehend 
or reputably to defend the whole undiminished and un- 
adulterated scheme of Catholic faith, while all alike pre- 
assume, with Mr. Locke, that the mind contains only the 
reliques of the senses, and therefore proceed with him to 
explain the substance from the shadow, the voice from the 
echo, — they can but detect each the other's inconsistencies. 
The champion of orthodoxy will victoriously expose the 
bald and staring incongruity of the Socinian scheme with 
the language of Scripture, and with the final causes of 
all revealed religion : — the Socinian will retort on the or- 
thodox the incongruity of a belief in mysteries with his 
own admissions concerning the origin, and nature of all 
tenable ideas, and as triumphantly expose the pretences 
of believing in a form of words, to which the believer 
himself admits that he can attach no consistent meaning. 
Lastly, the godless materialist, as the only consistent be- 
cause the only consequent reasoner, will secretly laugh at 
both. If these sentiments should be just, the conse- 
quences are so important that every well-educated man, 
who has given proofs that he has at least patiently studied 
the subject, deserves a patient hearing. Had I not the 
authority of the greatest and noblest intellects for at least 
two thousand years on my side, yet from the vital interest 
of the opinions themselves, and their natural, uncon- 
strained, and (as it were) spontaneous coalescence with 
the faith of the Catholic Church, (they being, moreover, 
the opinions of its most eminent Fathers) I might appeal 
to all orthodox Christians, whether they adhere to the 
faith only or both to the faith and forms of the Church, in 
the words of my motto : Ad isthac quteso vos, qualiacun- 
que primo videantur aspectu attendite, ut qui vobisforsan 
insanire videar, saltern quibus insaniam rationibus cognos- 
catis. 

There are still a few, however, young men of loftiest 
minds, and the very stuff out of which the sword and 



APPENDIX E. 301 

shield of truth and honour are to be made, who will not 
withdraw all confidence from the writer, although 

'Tis true, that passionate for ancient truths 
And honoring with religious love the great 
Of elder times, he hated to excess, 
With an unquiet and intolerant scorn, 
The hollow puppets of a hollow age 
Ever idolatrous, and changing ever 
Its worthless idols !* 

a few there are, who will still less be indisposed to follow 
him in his milder mood, whenever their Friend, 

Piercing the long-neglected holy cave, 
The haunt obscure of Old Philosophy, 
Shall bid with lifted torch its starry walls 
Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame 
Of odorous lamps tended by saint and sage !t 

I have hinted, above, at the necessity of a glossary, and 
I will conclude these supplementary remarks with a no- 
menclature of the principal terms which occur in the ele- 
ments of speculative philosophy, in their old and rightful 
sense, according to my belief; at all events the sense in 
which I have myself employed them. The most general 
term (ge?ius summum) belonging to the speculative intel- 
lect, as distinguished from acts of the will, is Representa- 
tion, or (still better) Presentation. 

A conscious Presentation, if it refers exclusively to the 
subject, as a modification of his own state of being, is= 
Sensation. 

The same if it refers to an Object, is = Perception. 

A Perception, immediate and individual is = an In- 
tuition. 



Poet. Works, I. p. 200. Ed. t lb. Ed. 



302 APPENDIX E. 

The same, mediate, and by means of a character or 
mark common to several things, is = a Conception. 

A Conception, extrinsic and sensuous, is = a Fact, or 
a Cognition. 

The same, purely mental and abstracted from the forms 
of the understanding itself = a Notion. 

A notion may be realized, and becomes cognition ; but 
that which is neither a sensation or a perception, that 
which is neither individual (that is, a sensible intuition) 
nor general (that is, a conception) which neither refers to 
outward facts, nor yet is abstracted from the forms of 
perception contained in the understanding ; but which is 
an educt of the imagination actuated by the pure reason, 
to which there neither lis nor can be an adequate corres- 
pondent in the world of the senses ; — this and this alone 
is = an Idea. Whether ideas are regulative only, ac- 
cording to Aristotle and Kant ; or likewise constitutive, 
and one with the power and life of nature, according to 
Plato, and Plotinus {kv Xoy<£> Zojtj y\v y icai rj Zwrj yv to 
<pu>g rtjv avdpwirujv) is th'e highest problem of philosophy, 
and not part of its nomenclature.* 



* See Table Talk, p. 95, U edit. Ed. 



A LAY SERMON, 

ADDRESSED TO THE HIGHER AND MIDDLE CLASSES, 

ON THE EXISTING DISTRESSES AND 

DISCONTENTS. 1817. 

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

Secontr drttton: 

WITH THE AUTHOR'S LAST CORRECTIONS AND NOTES, 

BY 

HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A. 



* 



'Eav iiif sXTrl^rjre, av'tkiriarov ot)K evprjVEre, avE%epev- 
vtjtov ov /cat awopov. Heraclitus. 

If ye do not hope, ye will not find : for in despairing ye 
block up the mine at its mouth, ye extinguish the torch, 
even when ye are already in the shaft. 



G od and the world we worship still together, 

Draw not our laws to Him, but His to ours ; 

Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither, 

The imperfect will brings forth but barren flowers ! 

Unwise as all distracted interests be, 

Strangers to God, fools in humanity : 

Too good for great things and too great for good, 

While still " I dare not " waits upon " I would," 



305 



INTRODUCTION. 

Fellow-Countrymen ! You I mean, who fill the 
higher and middle stations of society ! The com- 
forts, perchance the splendors, that surround you, 
designate your rank, but cannot constitute your 
moral and personal fitness for it. Be it enough 
for others to know that you are its legal, — but by 
what mark shall you stand accredited to your own 
consciences, as its worthy, — possessors? Not by 
common sense or common honesty ; for these are 
equally demanded of all classes, and therefore mere 
negative qualifications in your rank of life, or cha- 
racteristic only by the aggravated ignominy con- 
sequent on their absence. Not by genius or splen- 
did talent; for these, as being gifts of nature, are 
objects of moral interest for those alone, to whom 
they have been allotted. Nor yet by eminence 
in learning ; for this supposes such a devotion of 
time and thought, as would in many cases be in- 
compatible with the claims of active life. Erudition 
is, doubtless, an ornament that especially beseems 
a high station : but it is professional rank only that 
renders its attainment a duty. 

The mark in question must be so far common, 
that we may be entitled to look for it in you from 
the mere circumstance of your situation, and so far 
x 



306 INTRODUCTION. 

distinctive, that it must be such as cannot be ex- 
pected generally from the inferior classes. Now 
either there is no such criterion in existence, or 
the desideratum is to be found in an habitual con- 
sciousness of the ultimate principles, in reference 
to which you think and act. The least that can 
be demanded of the least favored among you is an 
earnest endeavour to walk in the light of your own 
knowledge ; and not, as the mass of mankind, by 
laying hold on the skirts of custom. Blind fol- 
lowers of a blind and capricious guide, forced like- 
wise (though oftener, I fear, by their own improvi- 
dence,* than by the lowness of their estate) to 

* A truth, that should not however be said, save in the 
spirit of charity, and with the palliating reflection, that this 
very improvidence has hitherto been, though not the inevi- 
table, yet the natural result of poverty and the Poor Laws. 
With what gratitude I venerate my country and its laws, my 
humble publications from the Fears in Solitude, printed in 
1798, (Poet. Works, I. p. 132.) to the present discourse bear 
witness. — Yet the Poor Laws and the Revenue ! — if I per- 
mitted myself to dwell on these exclusively, I should be 
tempted to fancy that the domestic seals were put in commis- 
sion and entrusted to Argus, Briareus, and Cacus, as lords 
of the commonalty. Alas ! it is easy to see the evil ; but to 
imagine a remedy is difficult in exact proportion to the expe- 
rience and good sense of the seeker. That excellent man, 
Mr. Perceval, whom I regard as the best and wisest states- 
man this country has possessed since the Revolution — (I 
judge only from his measures and the reports of his speeches 
in Parliament, for I never saw him) — went into the Minis- 
try, with the design as well as the wish of abolishing lot- 
teries. I was present at a table, when this intention was an- 
nounced by a venerable relative of the departed statesman, 



INTRODUCTION. 307 

consume life in the means of living, the multitude 
may make the sad confession 

Tempora mutantur ; nos et mutamur in Mis, 

unabashed. But to Englishmen in the enjoyment 
of a present competency, much more to such as are 
defended against the anxious future, it must needs 
be a grievous dishonor (and not the less grievous, 
though perhaps less striking, from its frequency) 
to change with the times, and thus to debase their 

who loved and honored the man, but widely dissented from 
him as a politician. Except myself, all present were partizans 
of the Opposition ; but all avowed their determination on 
this score alone, as a great moral precedent, to support the 
new minister. What was the result ? Two lotteries in the 
first year instead of one ! The door of the cabinet has a quality 
the most opposite to the ivory gate of Virgil. It suffers no 
dreams to pass through it. Alas ! as far as any wide scheme 
of benevolence is concerned, the inscription over it might 
seem to be the Dantean 

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate ! 
We judge harshly because we expect irrationally. But on 
the other hand, this disproportion of the power to the wish 
will, sooner or later, end in that tame acquiescence in things 
as they are, which is the sad symptom of a moral necrosis 
commencing. And commence it will, if its causes are not 
counteracted by the philosophy of history, that is, by history 
read in the spirit of prophecy ; — if they are not overcome by 
the faith which, still re-kindling hope, still re-enlivens cha- 
rity. Without the knowledge of man, the knowledge of 
men is a hazardous acquisition. What insight might not our 
statesmen acquire from the study of the Bible merelv as 
history, if only they had been previously accustomed to 
study history in the same spirit, as that in which o-ood men 
read the Bible ! 



308 INTRODUCTION. 

motives and maxims, the sacred household of con- 
science, into slaves and creatures of fashion. Thou 
therefore art inexcusable, man! (Rom. ii. 1) 
if thou dost not give to thyself a reason for the 
faith that is in thee : if thou dost not thereby 
learn the safety and the blessedness of that other 
Apostolic precept, Whatsoever ye do, do it in 
faith. Your habits of reflection should at least be 
equal to your opportunities of leisure, and to that 
which is itself a species of leisure, — your immu- 
nity from bodily labour, from the voice and lash of 
the imperious ever-recurring this day. Your at- 
tention to the objects that stretch away below you 
in the living landscape of good and evil, and your 
researches into their existing or practicable bearings 
on each other, should be proportional to the ele- 
vation that extends and diversifies your prospect. 
If you possess more than is necessary for your 
own wants, more than your own wants ought to be 
felt by you as your own interests. You are pacing 
on a smooth terrace, which you owe to the happy 
institutions of your country, — a terrace on the 
mountain's breast. To what purpose, by what 
moral right, if you continue to gaze only on the 
sod beneath your feet ? Or if converting means 
into ends and with all your thoughts and efforts 
absorbed in selfish schemes of climbing cloudward, 
you turn your back on the wide landscape, and 
stoop the lower, the higher you ascend. 

The remedial and prospective advantages that 
may be rationally anticipated from the habit of 



INTRODUCTION. 309 

contemplating particulars in their universal laws ; 
its tendency at once to fix and to liberalize the 
morality of private life, at once to produce and 
enlighten the spirit of public zeal ; and let me add, 
its especial utility in recalling the origin and pri- 
mary purport of the term, generosity,* to the heart 
and thoughts of a populace tampered with by so- 
phists and incendiaries of the revolutionary school ; 
these advantages I have felt it my duty and have 
made it my main object to press on your serious 
attention during the whole period of my literary 
labors from earliest manhood to the present hour. 
Whatever may have been the specific theme of my 
communications, and whether they related to cri- 
ticism, politics, or religion, still principles, their 
subordination, their connection, and their applica- 
tion, in all the divisions of our tastes, duties, rules 
of conduct and schemes of belief, have constituted 
my chapter of contents. 

It is an unsafe partition which divides opinions 
without principle from unprincipled opinions : and 
if the latter are not followed by correspondent ac- 
tions, we are indebted for the escape, not to the 
agent himself, but to his habits of education, to 
the sympathies of superior rank, to the necessity 
of character, often, perhaps, to the absence of 



* A genere: the qualities either supposed natural and 
instinctive to men of noble race, or such as their rank is cal- 
culated to inspire, as disinterestedness, devotion to the ser- 
vice of their friends and clients, frankness, and the like. 



31 Q INTRODUCTION. 

temptation from providential circumstances or the 
accident of a gracious nature. These, indeed, are 
truths of all times and places ; but I seemed to see 
especial reason for insisting* on them in our own 
times. A long and attentive observation had con- 
vinced me that formerly men were worse than their 
principles, but that at present the principles are 
worse than the men. 

Few are sufficiently aware how much reason 
most of us have, even as common moral livers, to 
thank God for being Englishmen. It would fur- 
nish grounds both for humility towards Providence 
and for increased attachment to our country, if 
each individual could but see and feel how large a 
part of his innocence he owes to his birth, breed- 
ing, and residence in Great Britain. The admi- 
nistration of the laws ; the almost continual preach- 
ing of moral prudence ; the pressure of our ranks 
on each other, with the consequent reserve and 
watchfulness of demeanor in the superior ranks, 
and the emulation in the subordinate ; the vast 
depth, expansion and systematic movements of our 
trade ; and the consequent interdependence, the 
arterial or nervelike network of property, which 
make every deviation from outward integrity a 
calculable loss to the offending individual himself 
from its mere effects, as obstruction and irregula- 
rity ; and lastly, the naturalness of doing as others 
do : — these and the like influences, peculiar, some 
in the kind and all in the degree, to this privileged 
island, are the buttresses, on which our foundation- 



INTRODUCTION. 311 

less well-doing is upholden even as a house of cards, 
the architecture of our infancy, in which each is 
supported by all. 

Well then may we pray, Give us peace in our 
time, O Lord! Well for us if no revolution, or 
other general visitation, betray the true state of 
our national morality ! But above all, well will it 
be for us if even now we dare disclose the secret 
to our own souls ! Well will it be for as many of 
us as have duly reflected on the Prophet's assurance, 
that we must take root downwards, if we ivould 
bear fruit upwards ; if we would bear fruit, and 
continue to bear fruit, when the foodful plants that 
stand straight, only because they grow in company, 
or whose slender surface-roots owe their whole 
stedfastness to their intertanglement, have been 
beaten down by the continued rains, or whirled 
aloft by the sudden hurricane. Nor have we far 
to seek for what ever it is most important that we 
should find. The wisdom from above has not 
ceased for us. The principles of the oracles of 
God (Heb. v. 12.) are still uttered from before the 
altar; — oracles, which we may consult without 
cost ; — before an altar where no sacrifice is required, 
but of the vices which unman us ; no victims 
demanded, but the unclean and animal passions, 
which we may have suffered to house within us, for- 
getful of our Baptismal dedication, — no victim, but 
the spiritual sloth, or goat, or fox, or hog, which 
lay waste the vineyard that the Lord had fenced 
and planted for himself. 



312 INTRODUCTION. 

I have endeavored in my previous discourse to 
persuade the more highly gifted and educated part 
of my friends and fellow-Christians, that as the 
New Testament sets forth the means and conditions 
of spiritual convalescence, with all the laws of con- 
science relative to our future state and permanent 
being ; so does the Bible present to us the elements 
of public prudence, instructing us in the true 
causes, the surest preventives, and the only cures, 
of public evils. The authorities of Raleigh, Cla- 
rendon, and Milton must at least exempt me from 
the blame of singularity, if undeterred by the con- 
tradictory charges of paradoxy from one party and 
of adherence to vulgar and old-fashioned prejudices 
from the other, I persist in avowing my conviction, 
that the inspired poets, historians and sententiaries 
of the Jews, are the clearest teachers of political 
economy : in short, that their writings* are the 

* To which I should be tempted with Burke to annex 
that treasure of prudential wisdom, the Ecclesiasticus. I 
not only yield, however, to the authority of our Church, but 
reverence the judgment of its founders in separating this 
work from the list of the canonical books, and in refusing to 
apply it to the establishment of any doctrine, while they 
caused it to be "read for example of life and instruction of 
manners." Excellent, nay, invaluable as this book is in the 
place assigned to it by our Church, that place is justified on 
the clearest grounds. For not to say that the compiler him- 
self candidly cautions us against the imperfections of his 
translation, and its no small difference from the original 
Hebrew, as it was written by his grandfather, he so ex- 
presses himself in his prologue as to exclude all claims to 
inspiration or divine authority in any other or higher sense 



INTRODUCTION 313 

statesman's best manual, not only as containing 
the first principles and ultimate grounds of State- 
policy whether in prosperous times or in those of 
danger and distress, but as supplying likewise the 

than every writer is entitled to make/ who having qualified 
himself by the careful study of the books of other men had 
been drawn on to write something himself. But of still 
greater weight practically, are the objections derived from 
certain passages of the book, which savour too plainly of the 
fancies and prejudices of a Jew of Jerusalem ; for example, 
c. 1. 25-26, and of greater still the objections drawn from 
other passages, as from c. xli. which by implication and ob- 
vious inference are nearly tantamount to a denial of a future 
state, and bear too great a resemblance to the ethics of the 
Greek poets and orators in the substitution of posthumous 
fame for a true resurrection and a consequent personal en- 
durance ; the substitution in short, of a nominal for a real 
immortality. Lastly the prudential spirit of the maxims in 
general in which prudence is taught too much on its own 
grounds instead of being recommended as the organ or 
vehicle of a spiritual principle in its existing worldly rela- 
tions. In short, prudence ceases to be wisdom when it is 
not to the filial fear of God, and to the sense of the excel- 
lence of the divine laws, what the body is to the soul. 
Now in the work of the son of Sirach, prudence is both 
body and soul. 

It were perhaps to be wished, that this work, and the 
Wisdom of Solomon had alone received the honor of being 
accompaniments to the inspired writings, and that these 
should, with a short precautionary preface and a few notes 
have been printed in all our Bibles. The remaining books 
might without any loss have been left for the learned or for 
as many as were prompted by curiosity to purchase them, 
in a separate volume. Even of the Maccabees not above a 
third part can be said to possess any historic value, as au- 
thentic acounts. 



314 INTRODUCTION. 

details of their application, and as being a full 
and spacious repository of precedents and facts in 
proof. 

Well therefore (again and again I repeat to 
you,) well will it be for us if we have provided 
ourselves from this armory while yet the day of 
trouble and of treading down and of perplexity 
appears at far distance and only in the valley of 
vision : if we have humbled ourselves and have 
confessed our thin and unsound state, even while 
from the uttermost parts of the earth we were 
hearing songs of praise and glory to the upright 
nation. (Is. xxii. 5. xxiv. 16.) 

But if indeed the day of treading down is pre- 
sent, it is still in our power to convert it into a 
time of substantial discipline for ourselves, and of 
enduring benefit to the present generation and to 
posterity. The splendour of our exploits, during 
the late war, is less honourable to us than the 
magnanimity of our views, and our generous con- 
fidence in the victory of the better cause. Ac- 
cordingly, we have obtained a good name, so that 
the nations around us have displayed a disposition 
to follow our example and imitate our institutions ; 
too often I fear even in parts where from the dif- 
ference of our relative circumstances the imitation 
had little chance of proving more than mimicry. 
But it will be far more glorious, and to our 
neighbours incomparably more instructive, if in 
distresses to which all countries are liable we be- 
stir ourselves in remedial and preventive arrange- 



INTRODUCTION. 315 

ments which all nations may more or less adopt ; 
inasmuch as they are grounded on principles in- 
telligible to all rational, and obligatory on all moral, 
beings ; inasmuch as, having been taught by God's 
word, exampled by God's providence, commanded 
by God's law, and recommended by promises of 
God's grace, they alone can form the foundations 
of a Christian community. Do we love our 
country ? These are the principles by which the 
true friend of the people is contradistinguished 
from the factious demagogue. They are at once 
the rock and the quarry. On these alone and with 
these alone is the solid welfare of a people to be 
built. Do we love our own souls ? These are the 
principles, the neglect of which writes hypocrite 
and suicide on the brow of the professing Christian. 
For these are the keystone of that arch on which 
alone we can cross the torrent of life and death 
with safety on the passage ; with peace in the re- 
trospect ; and with hope shining upon us from 
through the cloud toward which we are travelling. 
Not, my Christian friends ! by all the lamps of 
worldly wisdom clustered in one blaze can we guide 
our paths so securely as by fixing our eyes on this 
inevitable cloud, through which all must pass, 
which at every step becomes darker and more 
threatening to the children of this world, but to 
the children of faith and obedience still thins away 
as they approach, to melt at length and dissolve 
into that glorious light, from which as so many 
gleams and reflections of the same falling on us 



316 INTRODUCTION. 

during our mortal pilgrimage, we derive all prin- 
ciples of true and lively knowledge, alike in 
science and in morals, alike in communities and in 
individuals. 

It has been my purpose throughout the follow- 
ing discourse to guard myself and my readers from 
extremes of all kinds : I will therefore conclude 
this Introduction by inforcing the maxim in its 
relation to our religious opinions, out of which, 
with or without our consciousness, all our other 
opinions flow as from their spring-head and per- 
petual feeder. And that I might neglect no in- 
nocent mode of attracting or relieving the reader's 
attention, I have moulded my reflections into the 
following 

ALLEGORIC VISION. 

A feeling of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is 
wont to take possession of me alike in spring and 
in autumn. But in spring it is the melancholy of 
hope : in autumn it is the melancholy of resigna- 
tion. As I was journeying on foot through the 
Appennine, I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the 
spring and the autumn and the melancholy of both 
seemed to have combined. In his discourse there 
were the freshness and the colors of April : 

Qual ramicel a ramo, 
Tal da pensier pensiero 
In lui germogliava. 

But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I 



INTRODUCTION. 317 

bethought me of the not unlovely decays, both of 
age and of the late season in the stately elm, 
after the clusters have been plucked from its en- 
twining vines, and the vines are as bands of dried 
withies around its trunk and branches. Even so 
there was a memory on his smooth and ample fore- 
head, which blended with the dedication of his 
steady eyes, that still looked — I know not, whether 
upward, or far onward, or rather to the line of 
meeting where the sky rests upon the distance. 
But how may I express that dimness of abstrac- 
tion which lay like the flitting tarnish from the 
breath of a sigh on a silver mirror, and which ac- 
corded with the lustre of the pilgrim's eyes, with 
their slow and reluctant movement, whenever he 
turned them to any object on the right hand or on 
he left? It seemed, methought, as if there lay 
upon the brightness a shadowy presence of disap- 
pointments now unfelt, but never forgotten. It 
was at once the melancholy of hope and of resig- 
nation. 

We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a 
sudden tempest of wind and rain forced us to seek 
protection in the vaulted door-way of a lone cha- 
pelry : and we sate face to face each on the stone 
bench along-side the low, weather-stained wall, 
and as close as possible to the massy door. 

After a pause of silence : " Even thus," said 
he, " like two strangers that have fled to the same 
shelter from the same storm, not seldom do despair 
and hope meet for the first time in the porch 



318 INTRODUCTION. 

of death !" " All extremes meet/' I answered ; 
" but yours was a strange and visionary thought." 
u The better then doth it beseem both the place 
and me," he replied. " From a visionary wilt 
thou hear a vision ? Mark that vivid flash through 
this torrent of rain. Fire and water. Even here 
thy adage holds true, and its truth is the moral of 
my vision." I entreated him to proceed. Sloping 
his face toward the arch and yet averting his eye 
from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his words : 
till listening to the wind that echoed within the 
hollow edifice, and to the rain without, 

Which stole on his thoughts with its two -fold sound, 
The clash hard by and the murmur all round, 

he gradually sank away, alike from me and from 
his own purpose, and amid the gloom of the storm 
and in the duskiness of that place he sate an em- 
blem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like a mourner 
on the sodded grave of an only one, an aged mourner, 
who is watching the waned moon and sorroweth 
not. Starting at length from his brief trance of 
abstraction, with courtesy and an atoning smile he 
renewed his discourse, and commenced his parable. 
During one of those short furlows from the ser- 
vice of the body, which the soul may sometimes 
obtain even in this its militant state, I found my- 
self in a vast plain, which I immediately knew to 
be the Valley of Life. It possessed an astonishing 
diversity of soils : here was a sunny spot, and there 
a dark one, forming just such a mixture of sun- 



INTRODUCTION. 319 

shine and shade, as we may have observed on the 
mountains' side on an April day, when the thin 
broken clouds are scattered over heaven. Almost 
in the very entrance of the valley stood a large 
and gloomy pile, into which I seemed constrained 
to enter. Every part of the building was crowded 
with tawdry ornaments and fantastic deformity. 
On every window was portrayed, in glaring and 
inelegant colors, some horrible tale or preterna- 
tural incident, so that not a ray of light could 
enter, untinged by the medium through which it 
passed. The body of the building was full of 
people, some of them dancing in and out in un- 
intelligible figures, with strange ceremonies and 
antic merriment, while others seemed convulsed 
with horror, or pining in mad melancholy. In- 
termingled with these, I observed a number of 
men, clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared 
now to marshal the various groups and to direct 
their movements ; and now with menacing coun- 
tenances, to drag some reluctant victim to a vast 
idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed, which formed 
at the same time an immense cage, and the shape 
of a human Colossus. 

I stood for a while lost in wonder, what these 
things might mean ; when lo ! one of the directors 
came up to me, and with a stern and reproachful 
look bade me uncover my head ; for that the place, 
into which I had entered, was the temple of the 
only true religion, in the holier recesses of which 
the great Goddess personally resided. Himself 



320 INTRODUCTION. 

too he bade me reverence, as the consecrated mi- 
nister of her rites. Awe-struck by the name of 
religion, I bowed before the priest, and humbly 
and earnestly entreated him to conduct me into 
her presence. He assented. Offerings he took 
from me, with mystic sprinklings of water and 
with salt he purified, and with strange summations 
he exorcised, me ; and then led me through many 
a dark and winding alley, the dew-damps of which 
chilled my flesh, and the hollow echoes under my 
feet, mingled, methought, with moanings, af- 
frighted me. At length we entered a large hall 
without window, or spiracle, or lamp. The asylum 
and dormitory it seemed of perennial night ; only 
that the walls were brought to the eye by a number 
of self-luminous inscriptions in letters of a pale 
sepulchral light, which held strange neutrality with 
the darkness, on the verge of which it kept its 
rayless vigil. I could read them, methought; but 
though each one of the words taken separately I 
seemed to understand, yet when I took them in 
sentences, they were riddles and incomprehensible. 
As I stood meditating on these hard sayings, my 
guide thus addressed me, — Read and believe : these 
are mysteries ! — At the extremity of the vast hall 
the Goddess was placed. Her features, blended 
with darkness, rose out to my view, terrible, yet 
vacant. I prostrated myself before her, and then 
retired with my guide, soul-withered, and wonder- 
ing, and dissatisfied. 

As I re-entered the body of the temple, I heard 



INTRODUCTION. 321 

a deep buz as of discontent. A few whose eyes 
were bright, and either piercing- or steady, and 
whose ample foreheads, with the weighty bar, 
ridge-like, above the eyebrows, bespoke observa- 
tion followed by meditative thought ; and a much 
larger number who were enraged by the severity 
and insolence of the priests in exacting their offer- 
ings, had collected in one tumultuous group, and 
with a confused outcry of " This is the temple of 
Superstition!" after much contumely, and turmoil, 
and cruel maltreatment on all sides, rushed out of 
the pile: and I, methought, joined them. 

We speeded from the temple with hasty steps, 
and had now nearly gone round half the valley, 
when we were addressed by a woman, tall beyond 
the stature of mortals, and with a something more 
than human in her countenance and mien, which 
yet by mortals could be only felt, not conveyed by 
words or intelligibly distinguished. Deep reflec- 
tion, animated by ardent feelings, was displayed in 
them : and hope, without its uncertainty, and a 
something more than all these, which I understood 
not ; but which yet seemed to blend all these into 
a divine unity of expression. Her garments were 
white and matronly, and of the simplest texture. 
We inquired her name. My name, she replied, is 
Religion. 

The more numerous part of our company, af- 
frighted by the very sound, and sore from recent 
impostures or sorceries, hurried onwards and ex- 
amined no farther. A few of us, struck by the 

Y 



322 CHRISTIAN PROPHECIES. 

manifest opposition of her form and manner to 
those of the living idol, whom we had so recently 
abjured, agreed to follow her, though with cautious 
circumspection. She led us to an eminence in the 
midst of the valley, from the top of which we could 
command the whole plain, and observe the relation 
of the different parts, of each to the other, and of 
each to the whole, and of all to each. She then 
gave us an optic glass which assisted without 
contradicting our natural vision, and enabled us to 
see far beyond the limits of the Valley of Life : 
though our eye even thus assisted permitted us 
only to behold a light and a glory, but what w r e 
could not descry, save only that it was, and that 
it was most glorious. 

And now with the rapid transition of a dream, 
I had overtaken and rejoined the more numerous 
party, who had abruptly left us, indignant at the 
very name of religion. They journeyed on, goad- 
ing each other with remembrances of past oppres- 
sions, and never looking back, till in the eager- 
ness to recede from the temple of Superstition they 
had rounded the whole circle of the valley. And 
lo ! there faced us the mouth of a vast cavern, at 
the base of a lofty and almost perpendicular rock, 
the interior side of which, unknown to them, and 
unsuspected, formed the extreme and backward 
wall of the temple. An impatient crowd, we en- 
tered the vast and dusky cave, which was the only 
perforation of the precipice. At the mouth of the 
cave sate two figures ; the first, by her dress and 



INTRODUCTION. 323 

gestures, I knew to be Sensuality ; the second 
form, from the fierceness of his demeanour and 
the brutal scornfulness of his looks, declared him- 
self to be the monster Blasphemy. Fie uttered big- 
words, and yet ever and anon I observed that he 
turned pale at his own courage. We entered. 
Some remained in the opening of the cave, with 
the one or the other of its guardians. The rest, 
and I among them, pressed on till we reached 
an ample chamber, which seemed the centre of the 
rock. The climate of the place was unnaturally 
cold. 

In the furthest distance of the chamber sate an 
old dim-eyed man, poring with a microscope over 
the torso of a statue, which had neither base, nor 
feet, nor head ; but on its breast was carved, Na- 
ture. To this he continually applied his glass, 
and seemed enraptured with the various inequa- 
lities which it rendered visible on the seemingly 
polished surface of the marble. Yet evermore was 
this delight and triumph followed by expressions 
of hatred, and vehement railing against a being, 
who yet, he assured us, had no existence. This 
mystery suddenly recalled to me what I had read 
in the holiest recess of the temple of Superstition. 
The old man spoke in divers tongues, and conti- 
nued to utter other and most strange mysteries. 
Among the rest he talked much and vehemently 
concerning an infinite series of causes and effects, 
which he explained to be — a string of blind men, 
the last of whom caught hold of the skirt of the 



324 INTRODUCTION. 

one before him, he of the next, and so on till they 
were all out of sight ; and that they all walked 
infallibly straight, without making" one false step, 
though all were alike blind. Methought I bor- 
rowed courage from surprise, and asked him, — 
" Who then is at the head to guide them? ,, He 
looked at me with ineffable contempt, not un- 
mixed with an angry suspicion, and then replied, 
u No one ; — the string of blind men goes on for 
ever without any beginning: for although one 
blind man cannot move without stumbling, yet 
infinite blindness supplies the want of sight." I 
burst into daughter, which instantly turned to 
terror ; — for as he started forward in rage, I caught 
a glance of him from behind ; and lo ! I beheld a 
monster bi-form and Janus-headed, in the hinder 
face and shape of which I instantly recognized 
the dread countenance of Superstition — and in the 
terror I awoke. 



A LAY SERMON, 

ETC. 

Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters. 

Isaiah xxxii. 20. 

On all occasions the beginning should look toward 
the end ; and most of all when we offer counsel 
concerning circumstances of great distress, and 
of still greater alarm. But such is my business 
at present, and the common duty of all whose 
competence justifies the attempt. And therefore, 
my Christian friends and fellow Englishmen, have 
I in a day of trouble and of treading down and 
of perplexity, taken my beginning from this as- 
surance of an inspired messenger to the devisers 
of liberal things, (xxxiii. 8.) who confident in 
hope are fearless in charity. For to enforce the 
precept involved in this gladsome annunciation of 
the Evangelical herald, to awaken the lively feel- 
ing which it breathes, and to justify the line of 
conduct which it encourages, are the end to 
which my present efforts are directed — the ulti- 
mate object of the present address, to which all 
the other points, therein discussed, are but intro- 
ductory and preparative. Blessed are ye that sow 
beside all waters. It is the assurance of a Pro- 
phet, and therefore surety itself to all who profess 



326 CHRISTIAN HOPEFULNESS 

to receive him as such. It is a command in the 
form of a promise, which at once instructs us in 
our duty and forecloses every possible objection to 
its performance. It is at once our guide and our 
pioneer — a breeze from Heaven, which at one and 
the same time determines our path, impels us along 
it, and removes beforehand each overhanging" 
cloud that might have conspired with our own 
dimness to bewilder or to dishearten us. What- 
ever our own despondence may whisper, or the 
reputed masters of political economy may have 
seemed to demonstrate, neither by the fears and 
scruples of the one, or by the confident affirma- 
tions of the other, let us be deterred. They must 
both be false if the Prophet is true. We will still 
in the power of that faith which can hope even 
against hope continue to sow beside all waters : 
for there is a blessing attached to it by God him- 
self, to whose eye all consequences are present, on 
whose will all consequences depend. 

But I had also an additional motive for the selec- 
tion of this verse. Easy to be remembered from 
its briefness, likely to be remembered from its 
beauty, and with not a single word in it which the 
malignant ingenuity of faction could pervert to the 
excitement of any dark or turbulent feeling, I 
chose it both as the text and title of this dicourse, 
that it might be brought under the eye of many 
thousands who will know no more of the discourse 
itself than what they read in the advertisements of 
it in our public papers. 



A DUTY. 327 

In point of fact it was another passage of Scrip- 
ture, the words of another Prophet, that originally 
occasioned this address by one of those accidental 
circumstances, which so often determine the current 
of our thoughts. From a company among* whom 
the distresses of the times and the disappointments 
of the public expectations had been agitated with 
more warmth than wisdom, I had retired to solitude 
and silent meditation. A Bible chanced to lie open 
on the table, my eyes were cast idly on the pag;e 
for a few seconds, till gradually as a mist clears 
away, the following words became visible, and at 
once fixed my attention. We looked for peace, but 
no good came ; for a time of health, and behold, 
trouble. — I turned to the beginning of the chapter: 
it was the eighth of the Prophet Jeremiah, and 
having read it to the end, I repeated aloud the verses 
which had become connected in my memory by their 
pertinency to the conversation, to which I bad been 
so lately attending: namely, the 11th, 15th, 20th, 
and 22nd. 

They have healed the hurt of the daughter of 
my people slightly, saying, Peace, Peace, when 
there is no peace. We looked for peace, but no 
good came : for a time of health, and behold, 
trouble ! The harvest is past, the summer is 
ended: andvje are not saved. Is there no balm in 
Gilead ? Is there no physician ? Why then is 
not the health of the daughter of my people re- 
covered ? 

These impassioned remonstrances, these heart- 



328 CHARACTER 

probing* interrogatories, of the lamenting Prophet 
do indeed anticipate a full and alas ! a too faithful 
statement of the case, to the public consideration of 
which we have all of late been so often and so 
urgently invited, and the inward thought of which 
our very countenances betray as by a communion 
of alarm. In the bold painting of Scripture lan- 
guage, all faces gather blackness, — the many at 
the supposed magnitude of the national embarass- 
ment, the wise at the more certain and far more 
alarming evil of its moral accompaniments. Peace 
has come without the advantages expected from 
peace, and on the contrary, with many of the se- 
verest inconveniences usually attributed to war. 
We looked for peace, but no good came ; for a 
time of health, and behold, trouble ! The harvest 
is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. 
The inference therefore contained in the preceding' 
verse is unavoidable. Where war has produced 
no repentance, and the cessation of war has brought 
neither concord nor tranquillity, we may safely cry 
aloud with the prophet: They have healed the 
hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying 
Peace, Peace, when there is no peace : and pro- 
ceed to answer the three questions in the answers 
to which the Prophet instructs us to seek the solu- 
tion of the problem. First, who are they who have 
hitherto prescribed for the case, and are still tam- 
pering with it? What are their qualifications? What 
has been their conduct? Second, what is the true 
seat and source of the complaint, — the ultimate 



OF THE DEMAGOGUE 329 

causes as well as the immediate occasions ? And 
lastly, what are the appropriate medicines ? Who 
and where are the true physicians ? 

First, who are those that have been ever loud and 
foremost in their pretensions to a knowledge both 
of the disease and the remedy ? The answer to 
this question is continued in a preceding part of 
the chapter from which I extracted the text, where 
the Prophet Isaiah enumerates the conditions of a 
nation's recovery from a state of depression and 
peril. The vile person, he tells us, must no more be 
called liberal, nor the churl be said to be boun- 
tiful. For the vile person will speak villainy, 
and his heart will work iniquity to practise hy- 
pocrisy and to utter error against the Lord ; to 
make empty the soul of the needy, and he will 
cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The in- 
struments also of the churl are evil : he deviseth 
wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying 
words, even when the needy speaketh aright. But 
the liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal 
things shall he stand, fxxxii. 5, 6, 7, 8.) 

Such are the political empirics, mischievous in 
proportion to their effrontery and ignorant in pro- 
portion to their presumption, the detection and ex- 
posure of whose true characters the inspired states- 
man and patriot represents as indispensable to the 
re-establishment of the general welfare, while his 
own portrait of these impostors whom in a former 
chapter (ix. 15.) he calls, the tail of the nation, 
and in the following verse, demagogues that cause 



330 IN ALL AGES 

the people to err, affords to the intelligent believer 
of all ages and countries the means of detecting 
them, and of undeceiving all whose own malignant 
passions have not rendered them blind and deaf and 
brutish. For these noisy and calumnious zealots, 
whom (with an especial reference indeed to the 
factious leaders of the populace who under this 
name exercised a tumultuary despotism in Jeru- 
salem, at once a sign and a cause of its approaching 
downfall,) St. John beheld in the Apocalyptic vision* 
as a compound of locust and scorpion, are not of 
one place or of one season. They are the peren- 
nials of history : and though they may disappear 
for a time, they exist always in the egg and need 
only a distempered atmosphere and an accidental 
ferment to start up into life and activity. 

It is worth our while, therefore, or rather it is 

* My own conception of this canonical book is, that it nar- 
rates in the broad and inclusive form of the ancient Prophets 
(that is, in the prophetic power of faith and moral insight 
irradiated by inspiration) the successive struggles and final 
triumph of Christianity over the Paganism and Judaism of 
the then Roman Empire, typified in the fall of Rome, the 
destruction of the Old and the symbolical descent of the 
New Jerusalem. Nor do I think its interpretation even in 
detail attended with any insuperable difficulties. 

It was once my intention to have translated the Apoca- 
lypse into verse, as a poem, holding a mid place between 
the epic narrative and the choral drama : and to have an- 
nexed a commentary in prose : —an intention long and fondly 
cherished, but during many years deferred from an un- 
feigned sense of my deficiency ; and now there remains only 
the hope and the wish, or rather a feeling between both. 



A DECEIVER, 331 

our duty to examine with a more attentive eye this 
representative portrait drawn for us by an infallible 
master, and to distinguish its component parts each 
by itself so that we may combine without confusing 
them in our memory; till they blend at length 
into one physiognomic expression, which whenever 
the counterpart is obtruded on our notice in the 
sphere of our own experience, may be at once re- 
cognized, and enable us to convince ourselves of 
the identity by a comparison of feature with feature. 
The passage commences with a fact which to the 
inexperienced might well seem strange and impro- 
bable ; but which being a truth nevertheless of our 
own knowledge, is the more striking and charac- 
teristic. Worthless persons of little or no estima- 
tion for rank, learning, or integrity, not seldom 
profligates, with whom debauchery has outwrestled 
rapacity, easy because unprincipled, and generous 
because dishonest, are suddenly cried up as men 
of enlarged views and liberal sentiments, our only 
genuine patriots and philanthropists : and churls, 
that is, men of sullen tempers and surly demeanor ; 
men tyrannical in their families, oppressive and 
troublesome to their dependents and neighbours, 
and hard in their private dealings between man 
and man ; men who clench with one hand what 
they have grasped with the other ; these are ex- 
tolled as public benefactors, the friends, guardians, 
and advocates of the poor ! Here and there in- 
deed we may notice an individual of birth and 
fortune, 



332 AN INCENDIARY, 

(For great estates enlarge not narrow minds) 

who has been duped into the ranks of incendiaries 
and mob-sycophants by an insane restlessness, and 
the wretched ambition of figuring as the Triton of 
the minnows. Or we may find, perhaps, a pro- 
fessional man of shewy accomplishments but of a 
vulgar taste, and shallow acquirements, who in 
part from vanity, and in part as means of in- 
troduction to practice, will seek notoriety by an 
eloquence well calculated to set the multitude 
agape, and excite gratis to over-acts of sedition 
or treason which he may afterwards be retained to 
defend. These however are but exceptions to the 
general rule. Such as the Prophet has described, 
such is the sort of men ; and in point of historic 
fact it has been from men of this sort, that pro- 
faneness is gone forth into all the land. (Jere- 
miah, xxiii. 15.) 

In harmony with the general character of these 
false prophets are the particular qualities assigned 
to them. First, a passion for vague and violent in- 
vective, an habitual and inveterate predilection for 
the language of hate, and rage, and contumely, 
an ungoverned appetite for abuse and defamation. 
The vile will talk villainy. 

But the fetid flower will ripen into the poisonous 
berry, and the fruits of the hand follow the blos- 
soms of the slanderous lips. His heart will work 
iniquity. That is, he will plan evil, and do his 
utmost to carry his plans into execution. The 



AN INCENDIARY, 333 

guilt exists already ; and there wants nothing but 
power and opportunity to condense it into crime 
and overt act. He that hateth his brother is a 
murderer, says St. John : and of many and va- 
rious sorts are the brother-haters, in whom this 
truth may be exemplified. Most appropriately for 
our purpose, Isaiah has selected the fratricide of 
sedition, and with the eagle eye and practised 
touch of an intuitive demonstrator he unfolds the 
composition of the character, part by part, in the 
secret history of the agent's wishes, designs and 
attempts, of his ways, his means, and his ends. 
The agent himself, the incendiary and his kindling 
combustibles, had been already sketched by Solo- 
mon in the rapid yet faithful outline of a master 
in the art ; The beginning of the words of his 
mouth is foolishness and the end of his talk 
mischievous madness. (Eccles. x. 13.) If in the 
spirit of prophecy,* the wise ruler had been pre- 
sent to our own times, and their procedures ; if 

* Solomon has himself informed us that beyond wealth and 
conquest, and as of far greater importance to him, in his ar- 
duous office of king and magistrate, he had sought through 
knowledge of wisdom to lay hold on folly ; — that is, by the study 
of man to arrive at a grounded knowledge of men, and 
through a previous insight into the nature and conditions 
of good to acquire by inference a thorough comprehension 
of the evil that arises from its deficiency or perversion. 
And truly in all points of prudence, public and private, we 
may accommodate to the royal Preacher his own words : 
(Eccles. ii. 12.) What can the man say that cometh after the 
King ? Even that which hath been said already. 



334 

while he sojourned in the valley of vision he 
had actually heard the very harangues of our reign- 
ing* demagogues to the convened populace ; could 
he have more faithfully characterized either the 
speakers or the speeches ? Whether in spoken or 
in printed addresses, whether in periodical journals 
or in yet cheaper implements of irritation, the ends 
are the same, the process is the same, and the 
same is their general line of conduct. On all occa- 
sions, — but most of all and with a more bustling 
malignity whenever any public distress inclines 
the lower classes to turbulence, and renders them 
more apt to be alienated from the government of 
their country; — in all places and at every oppor- 
tunity pleading to the poor and ignorant, — no 
where and at no time are they found actually 
pleading for them. Nor is this the worst. They 
even plead against them. Yes ! — sycophants to 
the crowd, enemies of the individuals, and well- 
wishers only to the continuance of their miseries, 
they plead against the poor and afflicted, under the 
weak and wicked pretence that we are to do no- 
thing of what we can, because we cannot do all 
that we would wish. Or if this sophistry of sloth 
(sopkisma pigri) should fail to check the bounty 
of the rich, there is still the sophistry of slander 
in reserve to chill the gratitude of the poor. If 
they cannot dissuade the liberal from devising li- 
beral things, they will at least blacken the motives 
of his beneficence. If they cannot close the hand 
of the giver, they will at least embitter the gift in 



A TYRANT, 335 

the mouth of the receivers. Is it not as if they 
had said within their hearts: — " The sacrifice of 
charity has been offered indeed in despite of us ; 
but with bitter herbs shall it be eaten I (Exod. 
xii. 8.) Imagined wrongs shall make it distaste- 
ful. We will infuse vindictive and discontented 
fancies into minds, already irritable and suspicious 
from distress : till the fever of the heart shall coat 
the tongue with gall and spread wormwood on the 
palate ?" 

However angrily our demagogues may disclaim 
all intentions of this kind, such has been their pro- 
cedure, and it is susceptible of no other interpreta- 
tion. We all know that the shares must be scanty, 
where the thing- to be divided bears no proportion 
to the number of the claimants. Yet He, who satis- 
fied a multitude in the wilderness with a few loaves 
and fishes, is still present to his Church. Small 
as the portions are, if they are both given and 
taken in the spirit of his commands, a blessing 
will go with each ; and the handful of meal shall 
not fail, until the day when the Lord bringeth 
back plenty on the land. But no blessing can 
enter where envy and hatred are already in pos- 
session ; and small good will the poor man have 
of the food prepared for him by his more favored 
brother, if he have been previously taught to re- 
gard it as a mess of pottage given to defraud him 
of his birth -right. 

If then to promise medicine and to administer 
poison ; if to natter in order to deprave ; if to af- 



336 A HYPOCRITE AND A SLANDERER. 

feet love to all and shew pity to none ; if to exag- 
gerate and misderive the distress of the labouring 
classes in order to make them turbulent, and to 
discourage every plan for their relief in order to 
keep them so ; if to skulk from private infamy in 
the mask of public spirit, and make the flaming 
patriot privilege the gamester, the swindler, or the 
adulterer ; if to seek amnesty for a continued vio- 
lation of the laws of God by an equal pertinacity 
in outraging the laws of the land ; if these charac- 
terize the hypocrite, we need not look far back 
or far round for faces, wherein to recognize the 
third striking feature of this prophetic portrait. 
When therefore the verifying facts press upon us 
in real life ; when we hear persons, the tyranny of 
whose will is the only law in their families, de- 
nouncing all law as tyranny in public ; — persons, 
whose hatred of power in others is in exaet pro- 
portion to their love of it for themselves ; when 
we behold men of sunk and irretrievable cha- 
racters, to whom no man would entrust' his wife, 
his sister, or his purse, having the effrontery to 
propose that we should entrust to them our reli- 
gion and our country ; when we meet with pa- 
triots, who aim at an enlargement of the rights 
and liberties of the people by inflaming the popu- 
lace to acts of madness that necessitate fetters; — 
pretended heralds of freedom and actual pioneers 
of military despotism ; we will call to mind the 
words of the prophet Isaiah, and say to ourselves : 
This is no new thing under the sun I We have 



LIEERTY OF THE PRESS 337 

heard it with our own ears, and it was declared to 
our fathers, and in the old time before them, that 
one of the main characteristics of demagogues in 
all ages is, to practise hypocrisy. 

Such, I assert, has been the general line of con- 
duct pursued by the political empirics of the day : 
and your own recent experience will attest the 
truth of the assertion. It was affirmed likewise 
at the same time, that as the conduct, such was 
the process : and I will seek no other support of 
this charge, I need no better test both of the men 
and their works, than the plain question : Is there 
one good feeling to which they do — is there a 
single bad passion to which they do not — appeal ? 
If they are the enemies of liberty in general, inas- 
much as they tend to make it appear incompatible 
with public quiet and personal safety, still more em- 
phatically are they the enemies of the liberty of the 
press in particular ; and therein of all the truths 
human and divine which a free press is the most 
efficient and only commensurate means of protect- 
ing, extending, and perpetuating. The strongest, 
indeed, the only plausible, arguments against the 
education of the lower classes are derived from 
the writings of these incendiaries ; and if for our 
neglect of the light that hath been vouchsafed to 
us beyond measure, the land should be visited with 
a spiritual dearth, it will have been in no small 
degree occasioned by the erroneous and wicked 
principles which it is the trade of these men to 
propagate. Well therefore has the Prophet made 



338 ENDANGERED. 

it the fourth mark of these misleaders of the mul- 
titude, not alone to utter error, but to utter error 
against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the 
hungry. Alas ! it is a hard and a mournful thing 
that the press should be constrained to call out 
for the harsh curb of the law against the press. 
For how shall the law predistinguish the ominous 
scritch owl from the sacred notes of augury, from 
the auspicious and friendly birds of warning ? 
And yet will we avoid this seeming injustice, we 
throw down all fence and bulwark of public de- 
cency and public opinion. Already has political 
calumny joined hands with private slander, and 
every principle, every feeling, that binds the citi- 
zen to his country, the spirit to its Creator, is in 
danger of being undermined. Not by reasoning, 
— for from that there is no danger ; but by the 
mere habit of hearing them reviled and scoffed at 
with impunity. Were we to contemplate the evils 
of a rank and unweeded press only in its effects 
on the manners of the people, and on the general 
tone of thought and conversation, the greater love 
we bore to literature, and to all the means and 
instruments of human improvement, the more 
anxiously should we wish for some Ithuriel spear 
that might remove from the ear of the ignorant 
and half-learned, and expose in their own fiendish 
shape, those reptiles, which inspiring venom and 
forging illusions as they list, 

■ thence raise, 



At least distemper'd discontented thoughts, 
Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires. 



THE DEMAGOGUE S MEANS. 339 

I feel, my friends ! that even the strong* and 
painful interest which the peculiar state of the 
times, and almost the occurrences of the hour 
create, can scarcely counterbalance the wearisome 
aversion inspired by the deformity and palpable- 
ness of the subject itself. As the plan originates 
in the malignant restlessness of desperate ambition 
or desperate circumstances, so are its means and 
engines a drag-net of fraud and delusion. The 
instruments also of the churl are evil, he deviseth 
wicked devices with lying words. He employs a 
compound poison, of which the following are the 
main ingredients, the proportions varying as the 
case requires, or the wit of the poisoner suggests. 
It will be enough rapidly to name and number the 
components, as in a catalogue. 1. Bold, warm, 
and earnest assertions, it matters not whether sup- 
ported by facts or not, nay, though they should 
involve absurdities and demonstrable impossibili- 
ties ; as for example, that the amount of the sine- 
cure places given by the executive power would 
suffice to remove all distress from the land. He 
is a bungler in the trade, and has been an indocile 
scholar of his dark master, the father of lies, who 
cannot make an assertion pass for a fact with an 
ignorant multitude. The natural generosity of the 
human heart which makes it an effort to doubt, 
the confidence which apparent courage inspires, 
and the contagion of animal enthusiasm, will in- 
sure the belief. Even in large assemblies of men 
highly educated it is too often sufficient to place 
impressive images in juxta-position ; and the con- 



340 THE DEMAGOGUE'S MEANS. 

stitutive forms of the mind itself aided by the 
power of habit will supply the rest. For we all 
think by causal connections. 2. Startling parti- 
cular facts, which, dissevered from their context, 
enable a man to convey falsehood while he says 
truth. 3. Arguments built on passing events and 
deriving an undue importance from the feelings 
of the moment. The mere appeal, however, to the 
auditors whether the arguments are not such that 
none but an ideot or a hireling could resist, is an 
effective substitute for any argument at all. For 
mobs have no memories. They are in nearly the 
same state as that of an individual when he makes 
(what is termed) a bull. The passions, like a 
fused metal, fill up the wide interstices of thought, 
and supply the defective links : and thus incom- 
patible assertions are harmonized by the sensation, 
without the sense, of connection. 4. The display 
of defects without the accompanying advantages, 
or vice versa. 5. Concealment of the general and 
ultimate result behind the scenery of local and 
particular consequences. 6. Statement of posi- 
tions that are true only under particular condi- 
tions, to men whose ignorance or fury, make them 
forget that these conditions are not present, or 
lead them to take for granted that they are. 7. 
Chains of questions, especially of such questions 
as the persons best authorized to propose are ever 
*the slowest in proposing; and objections, intelli- 
gible of themselves, the answers to which require 
the comprehension of a system. 8. Vague and 



the demagogue's means. 341 

common-place satire, stale as the wine in which 
flies were drowned last summer, seasoned by the 
sly tale and important anecdote of yesterday, that 
came within the speaker's own knowledge ! 9. 
Transitions from the audacious charge, not seldom 
of as signal impudence " as any thing was ever 
carted for," to the lie pregnant and interpretative : 
the former to prove the orator's courage, and that 
he is neither to be bought, nor frightened ; the latter 
to flatter the sagacity of the audience. 

3rj\6g l^iv avTo&ev 



'Ej/ iravovpyia re Kai Spavei icai ko/SclXikev \jlclgiv . 

10. Jerks of style, from the lunatic trope, p//^a0' 
£7T7ro£a/iora, 7roXXctQ re aXtv^rjdpag kirwv, to the buf- 
foonery and " red-lattice phrases " of the canaglia, 

<TKU)p iJV(TK£()G)V j36pj3opOV TE TToXvy KCU KCIKICLG KCLt 

(TVKo&avTiaQ ; the one in ostentation of superior 
rank and acquirements (for where envy does not 
interfere, man loves to look up ;) the other in 
pledge of heartiness and good fellowship. 11. 
Lastly, and throughout all, to leave a general im- 
pression of something striking, something that is 
to come of it, and to rely on the indolence of men's 
understandings and the activity of their passions 
for their resting in this state, as the brood- warmth 
fittest to hatch whatever serpents' egg opportunity 
may enable the deceiver to place under it. Let 
but mysterious expressions* be aided by signifi- 

* Vide North's Examen, p. 20 j and The Knights of 
Aristophanes. A version of this comedy, abridged and 



342 THE RESULT. 

cant looks and tones, and you may cajole a hot 
and ignorant audience to believe any thing by say- 
ing' nothing f and finally to act on the lie which they 
themselves have been drawn in to make. This is 
the pharmacopoeia of political empirics, here and 
everywhere, now and at all times. These are the 
drugs administered, and the tricks played off by 
the mountebanks and zanies of patriotism ; drugs 
that will continue to poison as long as irreligion 
secures a predisposition to their influence ; and 
artifices that, like stratagems in war, are never 
the less successful for having succeeded a hundred 
times before. They bend their tongues as a bow : 
they shoot out deceits as arrovjs : they are pro- 
phets of the deceit of their own hearts : they 
cause the people to err by their dreams and their 
lightness : they make the people vai?i y they feed 
them with vjormzvood, they give them the water 
of gall for drink ; and the people love to have it 
so. And what is the end thereof? (Jerem. 
passim.) 

Isaiah answers for me in the concluding words 
of the description; — To destroy the poor even 



modernized, would be a most seasonable present to the 
public. The words quoted above from this play and The 
Frogs, may be rendered freely in the order in which they 
occur : thus, 

1. Thence he is illustrious, as a man of all waters, a bold 
fellow, and one who knows how to tickle the populace. 

2. Phrases on horseback, curvetting- and careering* words. 

3. Scattering filth and dirt, malice and sycophantic tales. 



EFFECT OF TAXATION, 343 

when the needy speaketh aright ; — that is, to 
impel them to acts that must end in their ruin 
by inflammatory falsehoods, and by working on 
their passions till they lead them to reject the 
prior convictions of their own sober and unsophis- 
ticated understandings. As in all the preceding- 
features so in this, with which the prophetic por- 
trait is completed, our own experience supplies 
both proof and example. The ultimate causes of 
the present distress and stagnation are in my opi- 
nion complex and deeply seated ; but the imme- 
diate occasion is too obvious to be over-looked but 
by eyes at once red and dim through the intoxica- 
tion of factious prejudice, that maddening spirit 
which pre-eminently deserves the title of vinum 
dcemonum applied by an ancient Father of the 
Church to a far more innocent phrenzy. It is 
demonstrable that taxes, the product of which is 
circulated in the country from which they are 
raised, can never injure a country directly by the 
mere amount ; but either from the time or cir- 
cumstances under which they are raised, or from 
the injudicious mode in which they are levied, or 
from the improper objects to which they are ap- 
plied. The sun may draw up the moisture from 
the river, the morass, and the ocean, to be given 
back in genial showers to the garden, the pasture 
and the cornfield ; but it may likewise force up- 
ward the moisture from the fields of industry to 
drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated swamp, 
or the unprofitable sandwaste. The corruptions of 



344 IDEA OF 

a system can be duly appreciated by those only 
who have contemplated the system in that ideal 
state of perfection exhibited by the reason ; the 
nearest possible approximation to which under ex- 
isting circumstances it is the business of the pru- 
dential understanding* to realize. Those, on the 
other hand, who commence the examination of a 
system by identifying* it with its abuses or im- 
perfections, degrade their understanding into the 
pander of their passions, and are sure to prescribe 
remedies more dangerous than the disease. Alas ! 
there are so many real evils, so many just causes 
of complaint in the constitutions and administra- 
tion of all governments, our own not excepted, 
that it becomes the imperious duty of the true 
patriot to prevent, as much as in him lies, the 
feelings and efforts of his fellow-country-men from 
losing themselves on a wrong scent. 

If then we are to master the ideal of a benefi- 
cent and judicious system of finance as the pre- 
liminary to all profitable insight into the defects 
of any particular system in actual existence, we 
could not perhaps find an apter illustration than the 
gardens of southern Europe would supply. The 
tanks or reservoirs would represent the capital of a 
nation ; while the hundred rills hourly varying 
their channels and directions under the gardener's 
spade would give a pleasing image of the dispersion 
of that capital through the whole population by the 
joint effect of taxation and trade. For taxation 
itself is a part of commerce, and the Government 



A BENEFICIAL TAXATION. 345 

may be fairly considered as a great manufactur- 
ing-house, carrying- on in different places, by 
means of its partners and overseers, the trades of 
the ship-builder, the clothier, the iron-founder, 
and the like. As long as a balance is preserved 
between the receipts and the returns of Govern- 
ment in their amount, quickness, and degree of 
dispersion ; as long as the due proportion obtains 
in the sums levied to the mass in productive cir- 
culation, so long does the wealth and circumstantial 
prosperity of the nation, — (its wealth, I say, not its 
real welfare ; its outward prosperity, but not neces- 
sarily its happiness) — remain unaffected, or rather 
they will appear to increase in consequence of the 
additional stimulus given to the circulation itself 
by the reproductive action of all large capitals, 
and through the check which taxation, in its own 
nature, gives to the indolence of the wealthy in its 
continual transfer of property to the industrious 
and enterprizing. If different periods be taken. 
and if the comparative weight of the taxes at each 
be calculated, as it ought to be, not by the sum 
levied on each individual, but by the sum left in 
his possession, the settlement of the account will 
be in favor of the national wealth, to the amount 
of all the additional productive labor sustained or 
excited by the taxes during the intervals between 
their efflux and their re-absorption. 

But on the other hand, in a direct ratio to this 
increase will be the distress produced by the dis- 
turbance of this balance, by the loss of this pro- 



346 BALANCE DISTURBED. 

portion ; and the operation of the distress will be 
at least equal to the total amount of the difference 
'Between the taxes still levied, and the quantum of 
aid withdrawn from individuals by the abandonment 
of others, and of that which the taxes, that still 
remain, have ceased to give by the altered mode 
of their re-dispersion. But to this we must add 
the number of persons raised and reared in con- 
sequence of the demand created by the preceding 
state of things, and now discharged from their oc- 
cupations : whether the latter belong exclusively 
to the executive power, as that of soldiers and the 
like, or from those in which the labourers for the 
nation in general are already sufficiently numerous. 
Both these classes are thrown back on the public, 
and sent to a table where every seat is pre-occu- 
pied. The employment lessens as the number of 
men to be employed is increased ; and not merely 
in the same, but from additional causes and from 
the indirect consequences of those already stated, 
in a far greater ratio. For it may easily happen, 
that the very same change, which had produced 
this depression at home, may from equivalent 
causes have embarrassed the countries in com- 
mercial connection with us. At one and the same 
time the great customer at home wants less, and 
our customers abroad are able to buy less. The 
conjoint action of these circumstances will furnish, 
for a mind capable of combining them, a suffi- 
cient solution of the melancholy fact. They can- 
not but occasion much distress, much obstruction, 



TRANSITION PROM AVAR TO PEACE. 347 

and these again in their re-action are sure to be 
more than doubled by the still greater and uni- 
versal alarm, and by the consequent check of con- 
fidence and enterprise, which they never fail to 
produce. 

Now it is a notorious fact, that these causes did 
all exist to a very extraordinary degree, and that 
they all worked with united strength, in the late 
sudden transition from war to peace. It was one 
among the many anomalies of the late war, that it 
acted, after a few years, as a universal stimulant. 
We almost monopolized the commerce of the world. 
The high wages of our artizans and the high prices 
of agricultural produce intercirculated. Leases of 
no unusual length not seldom enabled the provident 
and thrifty farmer to purchase the estate he had 
rented. Every where might be seen roads, rail- 
ways, docks, canals, made, making, and projected; 
villages swelling into towns, w 7 hile the metropolis 
surrounded itself, and became (as it were) set with 
new cities. Finally, in spite of all the waste and 
havock of a twenty years' w r ar the population of 
the empire was increased by more than two millions. 
The efforts and war- expenditure of the nation, 
and the yearly revenue, were augmented in the 
same proportion : and to all this we must add a 
fact of the utmost importance in the present 
question, that the war did not, as was usually the 
case in former wars, die away into along expected 
peace by gradual exhaustion and weariness on both 



348 CIRCUMSTANCES AND DISTRESS 

sides, but plunged to its conclusion by a concen- 
tration, we might almost say, by a spasm of energy, 
and consequently by an anticipation of our re- 
sources. We conquered by compelling rever- 
sionary power into alliance with our existing and 
natural strength. The first intoxication of triumph 
having passed over, this our agony of glory was 
succeeded of course by a general stiffness, and 
relaxation. The antagonist passions came into 
play ; financial solicitude was blended with con- 
stitutional and political jealousies, and both, alas ! 
were exacerbated by personal imprudences, the 
chief injury of which consisted in their own ten- 
dency to disgust and alienate the public feeling. 
And with all this, the financial errors and pre- 
judices even of the more educated classes, in short, 
the general want or imperfection of clear views 
and a scientific insight into the true effects and in- 
fluences of taxation, and the mode of its operation, 
became now a real misfortune, and opened an addi- 
tional source of temporary embarrassment. Re- 
trenchment could no longer proceed by cautious 
and calculated steps ; but was compelled to hurry 
forward, like one who crossing the sands at too 
late an hour finds himself threatened by the inrush 
of the tide. Nevertheless, it was a truth susceptible 
of little less than mathematical demonstration, 
that the more, and the more suddenly, the revenue 
was diminished by the abandonment of the war- 
taxes, the greater would be the disturbance of the 



ATTENDING IT. 349 

balance :* so that the agriculturalist, the manu- 
facturer, or the tradesman, — (all in short but an- 
nuitants and fixed stipendiaries) — who during the 
war having paid as five had fifteen left behind, 
would shortly have less than ten after having paid 
but two and a half. What then the pressure on 
the country must be, when we add to the above the 
operation of the return to cash payments, without 
any change made in the intrinsic value of the coin, 
and so as in effect to reimpose the amount of taxes, 
nominally remitted, may be easily understood. 

But there is yet another circumstance, which I 
must not pass by unnoticed. In the best of times 
— or what the world calls such — the spirit of com- 

* The disturbance of this balance mav be illustrated 
thus : — Suppose a great capitalist to have founded in a large 
market-town a factory that gradually increasing employed 
at length from five to six hundred workmen ; and that he 
had likewise a second factory at a distance from the former 
(in the Isle of Man for instance) employing half that number, 
all of the latter having been drafted from and still belonging 
to the first parish. After some years we may further sup- 
pose, that a large proportion of the housekeepers and trades- 
people might have a running account with the capitalist, 
many with him, as being their landlord, and still more for 
their stock. The workmen would in like manner be for the 
greater part on the books of the tradesfolks. As long as 
this state of things continued, all would go on well; — nay, 
the town would be more prosperous with every increase of 
the factorv. The balance is preserved. The circulations 
counterpoise each other, or rather they are neutralized by 
interfluence. But some sudden event leads or compels the 
capitalist to put down both factories at once and with little 
or no warning ; and to call in all the monies owing to him, 



350 FLUCTUATION IN TRADE. 

merce will occasion great fluctuations, some falling 
while others rise, and therefore in all times there 
will be a large sum of individual distress. Trades 
likewise have their seasons, and at all times there 
is a very considerable number of artificers who are 
not employed on the average more than seven or 
eight months in the year : and the distress from 
this cause is great or small in proportion to the 
greater or less degree of dissipation and im- 
providence prevailing among them. But besides 
this, that artificial life and vigor of trade and 
agriculture, w r hich was produced or occasioned by 
the direct or indirect influences of the late war, 
proved by no means innoxious in its effects. Habit 

and which by law had the preference to all other debts. What 
would be the consequence ? The workmen are no longer 
employed, and cannot at once pay up their arrears to the 
tradesmen ; and though the capitalist should furnish the 
latter with goods at half price, and make the same abatement 
in their rent, these deductions would afford little present 
relief : while, in the meantime the discharged workmen from 
the distant factory would fall back on the parish, and increase 
the general distress. The balance is disturbed. Put the 
country at large for the parishioners, and the government in 
all departments of expenditure for the capitalist and his 
factories : and nearly such is the situation in which we are 
placed by the transition from the late war to the present peace. 
But the difference is this. The town may never recover its 
temporary prosperity, and the capitalist may spend his re- 
maining fortune in another county ; but a nation, of which 
the Government is an organic part with perfect interde- 
pendence of interests, can never remain in a state of de- 
pression thus produced, but by its own fault : that is from 
moral causes. 



IMPROVIDENCE IN FARMERS, ETC. 351 

and the familiarity with outward advantages, which 
takes off their dazzle ; sense of character ; and 
above all, the counterpoise of intellectual pursuits 
and resources ; are all necessary preventives and 
antidotes to the dangerous properties of wealth and 
power with the great majority of mankind. It is 
a painful subject : and I leave to your own experi- 
ence and recollection the assemblage of folly, pre- 
sumption, and extravagance, that followed in the 
procession of our late unprecedented prosperity ; the 
blind practices and blending passions of specula- 
tion in the commercial world, with the shoal of 
ostentatious fooleries and sensual vices which the 
sudden influx of wealth let in on our farmers and 
yeomanry. Now though the whole mass of calamity 
consequent on these aberrations from prudence 
should in all fairness be attributed to the sufferer's 
own conduct ; yet when there supervenes some one 
common cause or occasion of distress which press- 
ing hard on many furnishes a pretext to all, this 
too will pass muster among its actual effects, and 
assume the semblance and dignity of national ca- 
lamity. Each unfortunate individual shares during 
the hard times in the immunities of a privileged 
order, as the most tottering and ruinous houses 
equally with those in best repair are included in 
the same brief after an extensive fire. The change 
of the moon will not produce a change of weather, 
except in places where the atmosphere has from 
local and particular causes been predisposed to its 
influence. But the former is one, placed aloft and 



352 CAUSES OF DISTRESS 

conspicuous to all men ; the latter are many and 
intricate, and known to few. Of course it is the 
moon that must bear the entire blame of wet sum- 
mers and scanty crops. All these, however, 
- whether they are distresses common to all times 
alike, or though occasioned by the general revolu- 
tion and stagnation, yet really caused by personal 
improvidence or misconduct, combine with its pe- 
culiar and inevitable effects in making the cup 
overflow. The latter class especially, as being in 
such cases always the most clamorous sufferers, in- 
crease the evil by swelling the alarm. 

The main causes of the present exigencies ai'e 
so obvious, and lie so open to the common sense of 
mankind, that the labouring classes saw the con- 
nection of the change in the times with the sud- 
denness of the peace, as clearly as their superiors, 
and being less heated with speculation, were in the 
first instance less surprised at the results. To a 
public event of universal concern there will often 
be more attributed than belongs to it ; but never 
in the natural course of human feelings will there 
be less. That the depression began with the peace 
would have been of itself a sufficient proof with 
the many that it arose from the peace. But this 
opinion suited ill with the purposes of sedition. 
The truth, that could not be precluded, must be 
removed : and when the needy speaketh aright, 
the more urgent occasion is there for the wicked 
device and the lying words. Where distress is 
felt, tales of wrong and oppression are readily be- 



MISREPRESENTED. 353 

lieved, to the sufferer's own disquiet. Rage and 
revenge make the cheek pale and the hand tremble 
worse than even want itself : and the cup of sor- 
row overflows by being held unsteadily. On the 
other hand nothing calms the mind in the hour of 
bitterness so efficaciously as the conviction that it 
w r as not within the means of those above us, or 
around us, to have prevented it. An influence, 
mightier than fascination, dwells in the stern eye 
of necessity, when it is fixed steadily on a man : 
for together with the pow r er of resistance it takes 
away its agitations likewise. This is one mercy 
that always accompanies the visitations of the Al- 
mighty when they are received as such. If there- 
fore the sufferings of the lower classes are to supply 
air and fuel to their passions, and are to be per- 
verted into instruments of mischief, they must be 
attributed to causes that can be represented as re- 
movable ; either to individuals who have been pre- 
viously rendered unpopular, or to whole classes of 
men, accordingly as the immediate object of their 
seducers may require. What, though nothing 
should be more remote from the true cause ? What, 
though the invidious charge should be not only 
without proof, but in the face of strong proof to 
the contrary? What, though the pretended re- 
medy should have no possible end but that of ex- 
asperating the disease ? All w 7 ill be of little or no 
avail if these truths have not been administered 
beforehand. When the wrath is gone forth, the 
plague is already begun. Wrath is cruel, and 

A A 



354 PENSIONS 

where is there a deafness like that of an outra- 
geous multitude ? For as the matter of fire is> 
so it burnetii. Let the demagogue but succeed in 
maddening the crowd, he may bid defiance to de- 
monstration, and direct the madness against whom 
it please th him. A slanderous tongue has dis- 
quieted many, and driven them from nation to 
nation ; strong cities hath it pulled down and 
overthrown the houses of great men. (Ecclus. 
xxviii. 14.) 

We see in every promiscuous public meeting 
the effect produced by the bold assertion that the 
present hardships of all classes are owing to the 
number and amount of pensions and sine-cures. 
Yet from the unprecedented zeal and activity in 
the education* of the poor, of the thousands that 

* With all due humility we contended that the war in 
question had likewise its golden side. The anomalous occa- 
sions and stupendous events of the contest had roused us, 
like the blast of a trumpet from the clouds ; and as many as 
were capable of thinking- were roused to thought. It had 
forced on the higher and middle classes — say, rather on the 
people at large, as distinguished from the mere populace- 
the home truth, that national honesty and individual safety, 
private morals and public security, mutually grounded each 
other, that they were twined at the very root, and could not 
grow or thrive but in intertwine : and we of Great Britain had 
acquired this instruction without the stupifying influences 
of terror or actual calamity. Yet that it had operated prac- 
tically, and in a scale proportional to the magnitude of the 
occasion, the late and present condition of manners and in- 
tellect among the young men at Oxford and Cambridge, the 
manly sobriety of demeanor, the submission to the routine 



AND SINECURES. 355 

are inflamed by, and therefore give credit to, these 
statements, there are few without a child at home, 
who could prove their impossibility by the first 
and simplest rules of arithmetic ; there is not one, 
perhaps, who taken by himself and in a cooler mood, 
would stand out against the simple question, — 
whether it was not folly to suppose that the low- 
ness of his wages or his want of employment could 
be occasioned by the circumstance, that a sum (the 
whole of which, as far as it is raised by taxation, 
cannot take a yearly penny from him) was dis- 
persed and returned into the general circulation by 
annuitants of the Treasury instead of annuitants 
of the Bank, by John instead of Peter ; however 
blameable the regulation might be in other re- 
spects ? What then ? the hypothesis allows of a 



of study in almost all, and the zeal in the pursuit of know- 
ledge and academic distinction in a large and increasing 
number, afford a cheering testimony to such as were familiar 
with the state of the two Universities forty or even thirty 
years ago, with the moral contrast which they presented, at 
the close of the last, and during the former half of the pre- 
sent reign ; while a proof of still greater power, and open 
to the observation of all men, is supplied by the predomi- 
nant anxiety concerning the education and principles of 
their children in all the respectable classes of the commu- 
nity, and the unexampled scale, in consequence, of the very 
numerous large and small volumes composed or compiled 
for the use of parents. Nor here did the salutary influence 
stop. We had been compelled to know and feel that the 
times in which we had to act or suffer were the Saturnalia 
of revolution ; and fearful evidence had been given us at 
the cost of our unfortunate neighbours, that a vicious and 



356 TITHES, MACHINERY. 

continual reference to persons, and to all the un- 
easy and malignant passions which personalities 
are of all means the best fitted to awaken. The 
grief itself, however grinding it may be, is of no 
avail to this end ; it must first be converted into a 
grievance. Were the audience composed chiefly 
of the lower farmers and the peasantry, the same 
circumstance would for the same reason have been 
attributed wholly to the Clergy and the system of 
tithes ; as if the corn would be more plentiful if 
the farmers paid their whole rent to one man, in- 
stead of paying nine parts to the landlords and the 
tenth to the tithe-owners ! But let the meeting 
be composed of the manufacturing poor, and then 
it is the machinery of their employers that is 
devoted to destruction : though it would not ex- 
ceed the truth if I affirmed, that to the use and 

ignorant population was a magazine of combustibles left 
roofless, while madmen and incendiaries were letting off 
their new invented blue lights and fire-rockets in every di- 
rection. The wish sprang up and spread throughout Eng- 
land that every Englishman should be able to read his Bible, 
and have a Bible of his own to read. The general wish or- 
ganized itself into act and plan : a discovery, the living 
educt of one man's genius and benevolence, rendered the 
execution practicable and even easy ; and the god-like idea 
began and is proceeding to realize itself with a rapidity yet 
stedfastness, which nothing could make possible or credible, 
but such a conviction effected by an experience so strange 
and awful, and acting on that volunteer spirit, that instinct 
of fervid yet orderly co-operation, which most of all ouF 
honourable characteristics distinguishes, secures, enriches, 
strengthens and elevates the people of Great Britain. [From 
an Essay published in the Courier, July, 1816.] 



CAPITALISTS. 357 

perfection of this very machinery the majority of 
the poor deluded destroyers owe their very exist- 
ence, owe to it that they ever beheld the light of 
heaven ! 

* Even so it is with the capitalists and store- 
keepers, who by spreading the dearness of provi- 
sions over a larger space and time prevent scarcity 
from becoming real famine, the frightful lot at 
certain and not distant intervals of our less com- 
mercial forefathers. These men by the mere in- 
stinct of self-interest are not alone birds of warn- 
ing, that prevent waste ; but as the raven of Elijah, 
they bring supplies from afar. But let the incen- 
diary spirit have rendered them birds of ill omen : 
and it is well if the deluded malcontents can be 
restrained from levelling at them missiles more 
alarming; than the curse of the unwise that alk-hteth 
not. There be three things (says the w T ise son of 
Sirach) that mine heart fear eth, the slander of a 
city, the gathering together of an unruly multi- 
tude, and a false accusation : all these are ivorse 
than death. But all these are the arena, and 
the chosen weapons of demagogues. Wretches ! 
they would without remorse detract the hope which 
is the subliming and expanding warmth of public 
credit, destroy the public credit which is the vital 
air of national industry, convert obstruction into 
stagnation, and make grass grow in the exchange 
and the market-place ; if so they might but goad 
ignorance into riot, and fanaticism into rebellion ! 
They would snatch the last morsel from the poor 



358 CAUSE OF THE DISTRESS. 

man's lips to make him curse the Government in 
his heart — alas ! to fall at length, either ignomi- 
niously beneath the strength of the outraged law, 
or (if God in his anger, and for the punishment of 
general depravity should require a severer and 
more extensive retribution) to perish still more la- 
mentably among the victims of its weakness. 

Thus then, I have answered at large to the first 
of the three questions proposed as the heads and 
divisions of this address. I am well aware that 
our demagogues are not the only empirics who 
have tampered with the case. But I felt unwil- 
ling to put the mistakes of sciolism, or even those 
of vanity and self-interest, in the same section with 
crime and guilt. What is omitted here will find 
its place elsewhere ; the more readily, that having 
been tempted by the foulness of the ways to turn 
for a short space out of my direct path, I have en- 
croached already on the second question ; that, 
namely, which respects the ultimate causes and 
immediate occasions of the complaint. 

The latter part of this problem I appear to my- 
self to have solved fully and satisfactorily. To 
those who deem any further or deeper research 
superfluous, I must content myself with observing, 
that I have never heard it denied that there is 
more than a sufficiency of food in existence. I 
have, at least, met with no proof that there is or 
has been any scarcity, either in the materials of 
all necessary comforts, or any lack of strength, 
skill and industry to prepare them. If we saw a 



OVERBALANCE OF COMMERCIAL SPIRIT. 359 

man in health pining* at a full table because there 
was not the savory meat there which he loved, 
and had expected, the wanton delay or negligence 
of the messenger would be a complete answer to 
our inquiries after the occasion of this sullenness 
or inappetence ; but the cause of it we should be 
tempted to seek in the man's own undisciplined 
temper, or habits of self-indulgence. So far from 
aoTeeins: therefore with those who find the causes 
in the occasions, I think the half of the question 
already solved of very unequal importance with 
that which yet remains for solution. 

The immediate occasions of the existing distress 
may be correctly given with no greater difficulty 
than would attend any other series of known his- 
toric facts; but toward the discovery of its true 
seat and sources, I can but offer a humble contri- 
bution. They appear to me, however, resolvable 
into the overbalance* of the commercial spirit 
in consequence of the absence or weakness of the 
counter-weights ; this overbalance considered as 
displaying itself, 1. in the commercial world it- 
self: 2. in the agricultural : 3. in the Government : 



* I entreat attention to the word, over-balance. My 
opinions would be greatly misinterpreted if I were supposed 
to think hostilely of the spirit of commerce to which I attri- 
bute the largest proportion of our actual freedom, and at 
least as large a share of our virtues as of our vices. Still 
more anxiously would I guard against the suspicion of a 
design to inculpate any number or class of individuals. It 
is not in the power of a minister or of a cabinet to say to the 



360 DECAYED FEELING OF RANK. 

and, 4. in the combined influence of all three on 
the more numerous and labouring classes. 

Of the natural counter-forces to the impetus of 
trade, the first that presents itself to my mind, is 
the ancient feeling- of rank and ancestry, com- 
pared with our present self-complacent triumph 
over these supposed prejudices. Not that titles 
and the rights of precedence are pursued by us 
with less eagerness than by our forefathers. The 
contrary is the case ; and for this very cause, be- 
cause they inspire less reverence. In the old 
times they were valued by the possessors and 
revered by the people as distinctions of nature, 
which the Crown itself could only ornament, but 
not give. Like the stars in heaven, their influence 
was wider and more general, because for the mass 
of mankind there was no hope of reaching, and 
therefore no desire to appropriate, them. That 
many evils as well as advantages accompanied this 
state of things I am well aware : and likewise that 
many of the latter have become incompatible with 
far more important blessings. It would therefore 
be sickly affectation to suspend the thankfulness^ 



current of national tendency, Stay here ! or, Flow there ! 
The excess can only be remedied by the slow progress of 
intellect, the influences of religion, and irresistible events 
guided by Providence. In the points, even, which I have 
presumed to blame, by the word Government I intend all 
the directors of political power, that is, the great estates of 
the realm, temporal and spiritual, and not only the Parlia- 
ment, but all the elements of Parliament. 



ECLIPSE OF PHILOSOPHY. 361 

due for our immunity from the one in an idle re- 
gret for the loss of the other. But however true 
this may be, and whether the good or the evil pre- 
ponderated, still, this reverence for ancientry in 
families acted as a counterpoise to the grosser 
superstition of wealth. Of the efficiency of this 
counter-influence I can offer negative proof only : 
and for this we need only look back on the de- 
plorable state of Holland in respect of patriotism 
and public spirit at and before the commencement 
of the French Revolution. 

The limits and proportions of this address allow 
little more than a bare reference to this point. The 
same restraint I must impose on myself in the fol- 
lowing. For under this head I include the general 
neglect of all the austerer studies ; the long and 
ominous eclipse of philosophy ; the usurpation of 
that venerable name by physical and psychological 
empiricism ; and the non-existence of a learned 
and philosophic public, which is perhaps the only 
innoxious form of an imperium in imperio, but at 
the same time the only form which is not directly 
or indirectly encouraged. So great a risk do I 
incur of malignant interpretation, and the asser- 
tion itself is so likely to appear paradoxical even 
to men of candid minds, that I should have passed 
over this point, most important as I know it to 
be ; but that it will be found stated more at large, 
with all its proofs, in a work on the point of pub- 
lication. The fact is simply this. We have — 
lovers, shall I entitle them ? — or must I not rather 



362 MODERN 

hazard the introduction of their own phrases, and 
say, amateurs or dilettanti, as musicians, botanists, 
florists, mineralogists, and antiquarians ? Nor is it 
denied that these are ingenuous pursuits, and such 
as become men of rank and fortune. Neither in 
these or in other points do I complain of any excess 
in the pursuits themselves ; but of that which arises 
from the deficiency of the counterpoise. The effect 
is the same. Every work, which can be made use 
of either to immediate profit or immediate pleasure, 
every work which falls in with the desire of ac- 
quiring wealth suddenly, or which can gratify 
the senses, or pamper the still more degrading 
appetite for scandal and personal defamation, is 
sure of an appropriate circulation. But neither 
philosophy or theology in the strictest sense of the 
words, can be said to have even a public existence 
among us. I feel assured that if Plato himself 
were to return and renew his sublime lucubrations 
in the metropolis of Great Britain, a handicrafts- 
man from a laboratory, who had just succeeded in 
disoxydating an earth, — silex, or lime, for instance, 
— would be thought the more respectable, nay, 
the more illustrious person of the two. Nor will 
it be the least drawback from his honors, that he 
had never even asked himself, what law of uni- 
versal being nature uttered in this phcenomenon : 
while the character of a visionary would be the 
sole remuneration of the man, who from the in- 
sight into that law had previously demonstrated 
the necessity of the fact. As to that which passes 



AND ELDER SYSTEMS. 363 

with us under the name of metaphysics, philosophic 
elements, and the like, I refer every man of reflec- 
tion to the contrast between the present times and 
those shortly after the restoration of ancient lite- 
rature. In the latter we find the greatest men of 
the age, statesmen, warriors, monarchs, architects 
in closest intercourse with philosophy. I need 
only mention the names of Lorenzo the Magnifi- 
cent, Picus Mirandola, Ficinus and Politian ; 
the abstruse subjects of their discussion, and the 
importance attached to them, as the requisite qua- 
lifications of men placed by Providence as guides 
and governors of their fellow- creatures. If this 
be undeniable, equally notorious is it that at pre- 
sent the more effective a man's talents are, and 
the more likely he is to be useful and distinguished 
in the highest situations of public life, the earlier 
does he shew his aversion to the metaphysics and 
the books of metaphysical speculation, which are 
placed before him : though they come with the 
recommendation of being* so many triumphs of mo- 
dern good sense over the schools of ancient philo- 
sophy. Dante, Petrarch, Spenser, Philip and Al- 
gernon Sidney, Milton and Barrow were Platonists. 
But all the men of genius, with whom it has been 
my fortune to converse, either profess to know no- 
thing of the present systems, or to despise them. 
It would be equally unjust and irrational to seek 
the solution of this difference in the men ; and if 
not, it can be found only in the philosophic systems 
themselves. And so in truth it is. The living of 



364 WANT OF A PHILOSOPHIC CLASS. 

former ages communed gladly with a life-breathing 
philosophy : the living of the present age wisely 
leave the dead to take care of the dead. 

But whatever the causes may be, the result is 
before our eyes. An excess in our attachment to 
temporal and personal objects can be counteracted 
only by a pre-occupation of the intellect and the 
affections with permanent, universal, and eternal 
truths. Let no man enter, said Plato, who has 
not previously disciplined his mind by geometry.* 
He considered this science as the first purification 
of the soul, by abstracting the attention from the 
accidents of the senses. We too teach geometry ; 
but that there may be no danger of the pupil's 
becoming too abstract in his conceptions, it has 
been not only proposed, but the proposal has been 
adopted, that it should be taught by wooden dia- 
grams. It pains me to remember with what ap- 
plause a work, that placed the inductions of mo- 
dern chemistry in the same rank with the demon- 
strations of mathematical science, was received 
even in a mathematical University. I must not 
permit myself to say more on this subject, de- 
sirous as I am of shewing the importance of a phi- 
losophic class, and of evincing that it is of vital 
utility, and even an essential element in the com- 
position of a civilized community. It must suffice, 
that it has been explained in what respect the pur- 
suit of truth for its own sake, and the reverence 

* Ovcdg ayE(i)}jieTpr}Tog dairuj. — Ed, 



RELIGIOUS FAITH ; 365 

yielded to its professors, has a tendency to calm or 
counteract the pursuit of wealth ; and that there- 
fore a counterforce is wanting* wherever philosophy 
is degraded in the estimation of society. " What 
are you" (a philosopher was once asked) "in conse- 
quence of your admiration of these abstruse spe- 
culations ? " He answered : " What I am, it does 
not become me to say; but what thousands are, 
w T ho despise them, and even pride themselves on 
their ignorance, I see — and tremble ! " 

There is a third influence, alternately our spur 
and our curb, without which all the pursuits and 
desires of man must either exceed or fall short of 
their just measure. Need I add, that I mean the 
influence of religion ? I speak of that sincere, that 
entire interest, in the undivided faith of Christ 
which demands the first-fruits of the whole man, 
his affections no less than his outward acts, his 
understanding equally with his feelings. For be 
assured, never yet did there exist a full faith in the 
divine Word, (by whom not immortality alone, 
but light and immortality were brought into the 
world) which did not expand the intellect while it 
purified the heart ; which did not multiply the aims 
and objects of the mind, while it fixed and. simpli- 
fied those of the desires and passions. If acqui- 
escence without insight ; if warmth without light ; 
if an immunity from doubt given and guaranteed 
by a resolute ignorance; if the habit of taking for 
granted the words of a catechism, remembered or 
forgotten ; if a sensation of positiveness substituted 



366 ITS TRUE CHARACTER. 

— I will not say, for certainty, but— for that calm 
assurance, the very means and conditions of which 
it supersedes ; if a belief that seeks the darkness, 
and yet strikes no root, immovable as the limpet 
from its rock, and like the limpet fixed there by 
mere force of adhesion ; — if these suffice to make us 
Christians, in what intelligible sense could our 
Lord have announced it as the height and consum- 
mation of the signs and miracles which attested his 
Divinity, that the Gospel was preached to the 
poor ? In what sense could the Apostle affirm 
that believers have received, not indeed the wisdom 
of this world that comes to nought, but the wisdom 
of God, that we might know and comprehend the 
things that are freely given to us of God ? or that 
every Christian, in proportion as he is indeed a 
Christian, has received the Spirit that searcheth 
all things, yea, the deep things of God himself? — 
On what grounds could the Apostle denounce even 
the sincerest fervor of spirit as defective, where it 
does not bring forth fruits in the understanding ?* 
Or again : if to believe were enough, why are we 
commanded by another Apostle, that, besides this, 
giving all diligence we should add to our faith 
manly energy and to manly energy knowledge I 
(2 Pet. i. 5.) Is it not especially significant, that 
in the divine economy, as revealed to us in the 
New Testament, the peculiar office of Redemption 
is attributed to the Word, that is, to the intel- 

* Brethren ! be not children in understanding : howbeit, 
in malice be ye children, but in understanding- be men. 



UNITARIANS. 367 

ligential wisdom which from all eternity is with 
God, and is God ; that in Him is life, and the life 
is the light of men ? 

In the present day we hear much, and from men 
of various creeds, of the plainness and simplicity 
of the Christian religion : and a strange abuse has 
been made of these words, often indeed with no ill 
intention, but still oftener by men who would fain 
transform the necessity of believing in Christ into 
a recommendation to believe him. The advocates 
of the latter scheme grew out of a sect that were 
called Socinians, but having succeeded in disbe- 
lieving far beyond the last foot-marks of the So- 
cini, have chosen to designate themselves by the 
name of Unitarians. But this is a name, which in 
its proper sense, can belong only to their antago- 
nists : for unity or unition, and indistinguishable 
unicity or oneness, are incompatible terms : while, 
in the exclusive sense in which they mean the 
name to be understood, it is a presumptuous boast, 
and an uncharitable calumny. Their true designa- 
tion, which simply expresses a fact admitted on all 
sides, Avouldbe that of Psilanthrophists,* or assert- 

* jVew things justify new terms. Novis in rebus licet nova 
nobis verba conjingere. — We never speak of the unity of at- 
traction, or of the unity of repulsion ; but of the unity of at- 
traction and repulsion in each one corpuscle. The essential 
diversity of the ideas, unity and sameness, was among- the 
elementary principles of the old logicians ; and the sophisms 
grounded on the confusion of these terms have been ably 
exposed by Leibnitz, in his critique on Wissowatius, the 
acutest, perhaps, of all the learned Socinian divines, when 
Socinian divines were undeniably men of learning. 



368 UNITARIANISM. 

ors of the mere humanity of Christ. It is the in- 
terest of these to speak of the Christian religion as 
comprised in a few plain doctrines, and containing 
nothing not intelligible, at the first hearing, to men 
of the narrowest capacities. Well then, (it might 
be replied) we are disposed to place a full reliance 
on the veracity of the great Founder of the Chris- 
tian religion, and likewise — which is more than 
you yourselves are on all occasions willing to ad- 
mit — on the accuracy and competence of the wri- 
ters, who first recorded his acts and sayings. We 
have learned from you, whom, — and we now wish 
to hear from you — what we are to believe. In 
answer to this request we are referred to a parti- 
cular fact or incident, recorded of Jesus, by his 
biographers, the object and purpose of which was, 
we are told, to produce belief of certain doctrines. 
And what are these ? Those without the previous 
belief of which, no man would, or rather, according 
to St. Paul's declaration, could become a convert 
to Christianity ; doctrines, which it is certain that 
Christ's immediate disciples believed, not less con- 
fidently, before they had acknowledged his mission, 
than they did afterwards. Religion and politics, 
they tell us, require but the application of a com- 
mon sense, which every man possesses, to a sub- 
ject in which every man is concerned. To be a 
musician, an orator, a painter, or even a good me- 
chanician, presupposes genius ; to be an excellent 
artizan or mechanic requires more than an average 
degree of talent ; but to be a legislator or a theo- 



UNITARIANISM. 369 

logian, or both at once, demands nothing 1 but com- 
mon sense ! Now, I willingly admit that nothing 
can be necessary to the salvation of a Christian 
which is not in his power. For such, there fore ; 
as have neither the opportunity nor the capacity 
of learning more, sufficient, doubtless, will be the 
belief of those plain truths, and the fulfilment of 
those commands, which to be incapable of under- 
standing, is to be a man in appearance only. But 
even to this scanty creed the disposition of faith 
must be added : and let it not be forgotten that 
though nothing can be easier than to understand a 
code of belief, four- fifths of which consist in 
avowals of disbelief, and the remainder in truths, 
concerning which (in this country at least) a man 
must have taken pains to learn to have any doubt ; 
yet it is by no means easy to reconcile this code 
of negatives with the declarations of the Chris- 
tian Scriptures. On the contrary, it requires all 
the resources of verbal criticism, and all the per- 
verse subtlety of special pleading, to work out a 
plausible semblance of correspondency between 
them. It must, however, be conceded that a man 
may consistently spare himself the trouble of the 
attempt, and leave the New Testament unread, 
after he has once thoroughly persuaded himself 
that it can teach him nothing of any real importance 
that he does not already know. St. Paul indeed 
thought otherwise. For though he too teaches us, 
that in the religion of Christ there is milk for 
babes : yet he informs us at the same time, that 

B B 



370 MEANING OF THE SIMPLICITY 

there is meat for strong men : and to the like 
purpose one of the Fathers has observed that in 
the New Testament there are shallows where the 
lamb may ford, and depths where the elephant 
must swim. The Apostle exhorts the followers of 
Christ to the continual study of the new religion, 
on the ground that in the mystery of Christ, which 
in other ages was not made known to the sons of 
men, and in the riches of Christ which no research 
could exhaust, there were contained all the trea- 
sures of knowledge and wisdom. Accordingly in 
that earnestness of spirit, which his own personal 
experience of the truth inspired, he prays with a 
solemn and a ceremonious fervour, that being 
strengthened with might in the inner man, they 
may be able to comprehend with all saints what 
is the breadth and length and depth and height, 
of that living principle at once the giver and the 
gift of that anointing faith, which in endless evo- 
lution teaches us of all things, and is truth ! For 
all things are but parts and forms of its progres- 
sive manifestation, and every new knowledge but 
a new organ of sense and insight into this one all- 
inclusive verity, which, still filling the vessel of 
the understanding, still dilates it to a capacity of 
yet other and yet greater truths, and thus makes 
the soul feel its poverty by the very amplitude of 
its present, and the immensity of its reversionary, 
wealth. All truth indeed is simple, and needs no 
extrinsic ornament. And the more profound the 
truth is, the more simple : for the whole labour 



OF THE SCRIPTURES. 371 

and building-up of knowledge is but one continued 
process of simplification. But I cannot comprehend, 
in what ordinary sense of the words the properties 
of plainness and simplicity can be applied to the 
Prophets, or to the writings of St. John, or to the 
Epistles of St. Paul ; or what can have so marvel- 
lously improved the capacity of our laity beyond 
the same class of persons among the primitive 
Christians; who, as we are told by a fellow Apostle, 
found in the writings last-mentioned many passages 
hard to be understood, which the unlearned as 
well as the unstable, were in danger of wresting 
and misinterpreting. I can well understand, how- 
ever, what is and has been the practical conse- 
quence of this notion. It is this very consequence, 
indeed, that occasioned the preceding remarks, 
makes them pertinent to my present subject, and 
gives them a place in the train of argument requi- 
site for its illustration. For what need of any 
after- recurrence to the sources of information con- 
cerning a religion, the whole contents of which can 
be thoroughly acquired at once, and in a few hours ? 
An occasional remembrancing may, perhaps, be 
expedient ; but what object of study can a man 
propose to himself in a matter of which he knows 
all that can be known, all at least, that it is of use 
to know ? Like the first rules of arithmetic, its 
few plain and obvious truths may hourly serve the 
man's purposes, yet never once occupy his thoughts. 
But it is impossible that the affections should be 
kept constant to an object which gives no employ- 



372 UNITARIAN 

ment to the understanding. The energies of the 
intellect, increase of insight, and enlarging views, 
are necessary to keep alive the substantial faith in 
the heart. They are the appointed fuel to the 
sacred tire. In the state of perfection all other 
faculties may, perhaps, be swallowed up in love ; 
but it is on the wings of the Cherubim, which the 
ancient Hebrew doctors interpreted as meaning the 
powers and efforts of the intellect, that we must 
first be borne up to the pure empyrean : and it 
must be Seraphs and not the hearts of poor mortals, 
that can burn unfuelled and self-fed. Give me 
understanding (exclaimed the royal Psalmist) and I 
shall observe thy law with my whole heart. Teach 
me knowledge and good judgment* Thy com- 
mandment is exceeding broad : O how I love thy 
Iq,w ! it is my meditation all the day. The en- 
trance of thy words giveth light, it giveth under- 
standing to the simple. I prevented the dawning 
of the morning : mine eyes prevent the night- 
watches, that I might meditate upon thy word. 
Now where the very contrary of this is the opinion 
of many, and the practice of most, what results can 
be expected but those which are actually presented 
to us in our daily experience ? 

There is one class of men* who read the Scrip- 

* Whether it he on the increase, as a sect, is doubtful. 
But it is admitted by all — nay, strange as it may seem, 
made a matter of boast, — that the number of its secret ad- 
herents, outwardly of other denominations, is tenfold greater 
than that of its avowed and incorporated followers. And 



CREED. 373 

tures, when they do read them, in order to pick 
and choose their faith : or (to speak more accu- 
rately) for the purpose of plucking- away live- 
asunder, as it were from the divine organism of 

truly in our cities and great manufacturing and commercial 
towns, among lawyers and such of the tradesfolk as are 
the ruling members in bookclubs, I am inclined to fear that 
this has not been asserted without good ground. For, 
Socinianism in its present form, consisting almost wholly 
in attack and imagined detection, has a particular charm for 
what are called shrewd knowing men. Besides, the vain 
and half-educated, whose Christian and surnames in the 
title pages of our magazines, lady's diaries, and the like, are 
the successors of the shame-faced Critos, Phileleutheroses, 
and Philaletheses in the time of our grandfathers, will be 
something : and now that Deism has gone out of fashion, 
Socinianism has swept up its refuse. As the main success 
of this sect is owing to the small proportion which the affir- 
mative articles of their faith ( rari nantes in gurgite vasto) bear 
to the negative, (that is their belief to their disbelief) it will 
be an act of kindness to the unwary to bring together the 
former under one point of view. This is done in the 
following catalogue, the greater part if not the whole of 
which may be authenticated from the writings of Mr. 
Belsham. 

1. They believe in one God, professing to differ from 
other Christians only in holding the Deity to be unipersonal, 
the Father alone being God, the Son a mere, though an in- 
spired and highly gifted, man, and the Holy Spirit either a 
synonyme of God, or of the divine agency, or of its effects. 

2. They believe men's actions necessitated, and consist- 
ently with this affirm that the Christian religion (that is, 
their view of it) precludes all remorse for our sins, they 
being a present calamity, but not guilt. 

3. They believe the Gospels though not written by in- 
spiration, to be authentic histories on the whole : though 



374 UNITARIAN 

the Bible, textuary morsels and fragments for the 
support of doctrines which they had learned before- 
hand from the higher oracle of their own natural 
common-sense. Sanctas Scrip tur as f rust ant ut 

with some additions and interpolations. And on the au- 
thority of these writings confirmed by other evidence, they 
believe in the resurrection of the man Jesus Christ, from 
the dead. 

4. On the historic credibility of this event they believe 
in the resurrection of the body, which in their opinion is 
the whole man, at the last day: and differ from other 
Churches in this only, that while other Christians believe, 
that all men will arise in the body, they hold that all the 
bodies that had been men will arise. 

5. A certain indefinite number of mankind thus renewed 
to life and consciousness, it is the common belief of them 
all, will be placed in a state of happiness and immortality. 
But with respect to those who have died in the calamitous 
condition of unreformed sinfulness, (to what extent it is for 
the supreme Judge to decide) they are divided among them- 
selves. The one party teach, that such unhappy persons 
will be raised only to be re-annihilated : the other party 
contend, that there will be a final restoration of all men, 
with a purgatory or state of remedial discipline, the severity 
and duration of which will be proportioned to the kind, 
degree, and obstinacy of the disease, and of which there- 
fore every man is left to his own conjectural hopes and 
fears : with this comfort however to the very worst, (that is, 
most unfortunate and erroneous of mankind) that it w r ill be 
all well with them at last. In this article they differ from the 
Papists in having no hell, and in placing their purgatory 
after, instead of before, the day of judgment. 

6. Lastly, as they hold only an intellectual and physical, 
and not a moral, difference in the actions and characters of 
men, they not being free agents, and therefore not more re- 
sponsible beings than the true beasts, although their greater 



CREED. 375 



frustrent. Through the gracious dispensations of 
Providence a complexity of circumstances may 
co-operate as antidotes to a noxious principle, and 
realize the paradox of a very good man under a 



powers of memory and comparison render them more sus- 
ceptible of being acted on by prospective motives — (and 
in this sense they retain the term, responsibility, after 
having purified it by the ex-inanition of its old, and the trans- 
fusion of a new, meaning) — and as they with strict conse- 
quence, merge all the attributes of Deity in power, intelli- 
gence, and benevolence, (mercy and justice being modes, or 
rather perspective views, of the two latter ; the holiness of 
God meaning the same or nothing at all ; and his anger, 
offence, and hatred of moral evil, being mere metaphors and 
figures of speech addressed to a rude and barbarous people) 
they profess to hold a Redemption — not however by the 
Cross of Christ, except as his death was an evidence of his 
sincerity, and the necessary preliminary to his Resurrection ; 
but — by the effects which this fact of his Resurrection, to- 
gether with his example, and his re-publication of the moral 
precepts (taught indeed long before, but as they think, not 
so clearly, by Moses and the Prophets) were calculated to 
produce on the human mind. So that if it had so happened, 
that a man had been influenced to an innocent and useful life 
by the example, precepts, and martyrdom of Socrates, So- 
crates, and not Christ, would have been his Redeemer. 

These are all the positives of the modern Socinian Creed, 
and even these it was not possible to extricate wholly from 
the points of disbelief. But if it should be asked, why this 
resurrection, or re-creation is confined to the human animal, 
the answer must be, — that more than this has not been reveal- 
ed. And so far all Christians will join assent. But some have 
added, and in my opinion much to their credit, that they 
hope it may be the case with the brutes likewise, as they 
see no sufficient reason to the contrary. And truly, upon 
their scheme, I agree with them. For if man be no other or 



376 UNITARIAN 

very evil faith. It is not denied that a Socinian 
may be as honest, useful and benevolent a cha- 
racter as any of his neighbours ; and if he thinks 
more and derives a larger portion of his pleasures 
from intellectual sources, he is likely to be more 

nobler creature essentially, than he is represented in their 
system, the meanest reptile, that maps out its path on the 
earth by lines of slime, must be of equal worth and respec- 
tability, not only in the sight of the Holy One, but by a 
strange contradiction even before man's own reason. For 
remove all the sources of esteem and the love founded on 
esteem, and whatever else pre-supposes a will and therein 
a possible transcendence to the material world ; mankind, 
as far as my experience has extended, (and I am less than 
the least of many whom I could cite as having formed the 
very same judgment) are on the whole distinguished from 
the other beasts incomparably more to their disadvantage, 
by lying, treachery, ingratitude, massacre, thirst of blood, 
and by sensualities which both in sort and degree it would 
be libelling their brother-beasts to call bestial, than to their 
advantage by a greater extent of intellect. And what in- 
deed, abstracted from the free-will, could this intellect be 
but a more shewy instinct of more various application in- 
deed, but far less secure, useful, or adapted to its purposes, 
than the instinct of birds, insects, and the like. In short, 
as I have elsewhere observed, compared with the wiles and 
factories of the spider, or with the cunning of the fox, it 
would be but a more efflorescent, and for that very cause a 
less efficient, salt to preserve the hog from putrifying before 
its destined hour. 

Well may the words of Isaiah be applied and addressed 
to the teachers and followers of this sect, or rather, I would 
say, to their tenets as personified — The word of the Lord was 
unto them, precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little and 
there a little, that they might go and fall backward, and be 
broken and spared. Wherefore, hear the word of the Lord, ye 
scornful men that rule this people ! Because ye have said, We 



CREED. 377 

so. But in such instances, (and that they are not 
infrequent, I am, from my own experience, most 
willing to bear witness,) the fruit is from the grafts, 
not from the tree. The native produce is, or would 
be, an intriguing, overbearing, scornful and worldly 
disposition ; and in point of fact, it is the only 
scheme of religion that inspires in its adherents a 
contempt for the understandings of all who differ 
from them.* But be this as it may, and whatever 
be its effects, it is not probable that Christianity 
will have any direct influence on men who pay it 
no other compliment than that of calling by its 
name the previous dictates and decisions of their 
own mother- wit. 

Still, however, the more numerous class is of 
those who do not trouble themselves at all with reli- 
gious matters, which they resign to the clergyman of 
the parish. But whilst not a few among these men 
consent to pray and hear by proxy; and whilst 
others, more attentive to the prudential advantages 
of a decorous character, yield the customary evi- 
dence of their Church-membership ; but, this per- 
formed, are at peace with themselves, and 

liave made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agree- 
ment! Your covenant with death shall be annulled, and your 
agreement with hell shall not stand. For your bed is shorter 
than that a man can stretch himself upon it, and the covering 
narrower than that he can wrap himself in it. — xxviii. 

* A Calvinist, or Moravian, for instance, would lament 
over a disbeliever in their peculiar tenets, as over one from 
whom the gift of faith had been hitherto withholden; but 
would readily join in attestation of his talents, learning-, good 
morals, and all natural gifts. — 1827. 



378 MODERN 



think their Sunday's task 

As much as God or man can fairly ask ; — 

there exists amongst the most respectable laity of 
our cities and great towns, an active, powerful, 
and enlarging minority, whose industry, while it 
enriches their families, is at the same time a support 
to the revenue, and not seldom enlivens their whole 
neighbourhood : men whose lives are free from all 
disreputable infirmities, and of whose activity in 
the origination, patronage, and management both 
of charitable and of religious associations, who must 
not have read or heard ? and which who that has, 
will dare deny to be most exemplary ? After the 
custom of our forefathers, and their pure household 
religion, these, in so many respects estimable per- 
sons, are for the greater part in the habit of having 
family-prayer, and a portion of Scripture read every 
morning and evening. In this class, with such 
changes or substitutions as the peculiar tenets of the 
sect require, we must include the sensible, orderly 
and beneficent Society of the Friends. Here then, 
if any where, (that is, in any class of men ; for the 
present argument is not concerned with individu- 
als,) we may expect to find Christianity tempering 
commercial avidity and sprinkling its holy damps 
on the passion of accumulation. This, I say, we 
might expect to find, if an undoubting belief in the 
threats and promises of Revelation, and a conse- 
quent regularity of personal, domestic, and social 
demeanor, sufficed to constitute that Christianity, 
the power and privilege of which is so to renew 
and irradiate the whole intelligrential and moral life 



QUAKERS : 379 

of man, as to overcome the spirit of the world. 
If this, the appointed test, were found wanting*, 
should we not be forced to apprehend, nay, are we 
not compelled to infer, that the spirit of prudential 
motive, however ennobled by the magnitude and 
awfulness of its objects,* and though as the termi- 
nation of a lower, — it mav be the commencement 
(and not seldom the occasion) of a higher state, 
-is not, even in respect of morality itself, that 
abiding and continuous principle of action, which 
is either one with the faith spoken of by St. Paul, 
or its immediate offspring. It cannot be that 



* And in this alone, Paley, by a use of terms altogether 
arbitrary, places the distinction between prudence and 
virtue, the former being self-love in its application to the 
sum of pain and pleasure that is likely to result to us, as the 
consequence of our actions, in the present life only; while 
the latter is the same self-love, that together with the pre- 
sent consequences of our actions, takes in likewise the more 
important enjoyments or sufferings which, accordingly as we 
obey or disobey His known commands, God has promised 
to bestow, or threatened to inflict, on us in the life to come. a 
According to this writer, it becomes the duty of a rational 
free agent (it would be more pertinent to say, of a sentient 



a "And from this account of obligation it follows, that 
we are obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain 
or lose something by ; for nothing else can be a violent 
motive to us. As we should not be obliged to obey the 
laws or the magistrate, unless rewards or punishments, 
pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our 
obedience ; so neither should we, without the same reason, 
be obliged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey 
the commands of God."— Paley, Moral and Polit. Phil. 
B. ii. c. 2. et passim. 



380 THEIR CHARACTER 

spirit of obedience to the commands of Christ, by 
which the soul dwelleth in him, and he in it ; and 
which our Saviour himself announces as a being 
born again. And this indispensable act, or in- 
fluence, or impregnation, of which, as of a divine 
tradition, the eldest philosophy is not silent ; which 
flashed through the darkness of the pagan myste- 
ries ; and which it was therefore a reproach to a 
master in Israel, that he had not already known ; 
this is elsewhere explained, as a seed which, though 

animal capable of forecast) to reduce his will to an habitual 
coincidence with his reason, on no other ground, but because 
he believes that God is able and determined either to gratify 
or to torment him. Thus, the great principle of the Gospel, 
that we are bound to love our neighbours as ourselves and 
God above all, must, if translated into a consistency with 
this theory of enlightened self-love, run thus : On the ground 
of our fear of torment and our expectation of pleasure from 
an infinitely powerful Being, we are under a prudential ob- 
ligation of acting towards our neighbours as if we loved 
them equally with ourselves ; but ultimately and in very 
truth to love ourselves only. And this is the work, this the 
system of moral and political philosophy cited as highest 
authority in our Senate and Courts of Judicature ? And 
(still worse!) this is the text-book for the moral lectures at 
one of our Universities, justly the most celebrated for 
scientific ardor and manly thinking. It is not without a 
pang of filial sorrow that I make this acknowledgement, 
which nothing could have extorted from me but the strongest 
conviction of the mischievous and debasing tendencies of 
that wide-spread system, in which the Works of Paley (his 
Sermons excepted) act not the less pernicious part, because 
the most decorous and plausible. The fallacious sophistry 
of the grounding principle in this whole system has been 
detected by Des Cartes, and Bishop Butler; and of late 
years, with great ability and originality, by Mr. Hazlitt. 



AS CHRISTIANS. 381 

of gradual developement, did yet potentially con- 
tain the essential form not merely of a better, but 
of another life ; — amidst all the frailties and tran- 
sient eclipses of mortality making, 1 repeat, the 
subjects of this regeneration not so properly better 
as other men, whom therefore the world could not 
but hate, as aliens. Its own native growth, to 
whatever height it had been improved by cultivation 
(whether through the agency of blind sympathies, 
or of an intelligent self-interest, the two best guides 
to the loftiest points to which the worldly life can 
ascend) the world has always been ready and 
willing to acknowledge and admire. They are of 
the world : therefore speak they out of the heart 
of the world (ek tov KocrfjiGv) and the world hear- 
eth them. (1. John, iv.) 

To abstain from acts of wrong and violence, to 
be moreover industrious, useful, and of seemly 
bearing, are qualities presupposed in the Gospel 
code, as the preliminary conditions, rather than 
the proper and peculiar effects, of Christianity. 
But they are likewise qualities so palpably indis- 
pensable to the temporal interests of mankind that, 
if we except the brief frenzies of revolutionary 
riot, there never was a time, in which the world 
did not profess to reverence them : nor can we 
state any period, in which a more than ordinary 
character for assiduity, regularity, and charitable- 
ness did not secure the world's praise and favor, 
and were not calculated to advance the individual's 
own worldly interests : provided only, that his 



382 WORLDLY PRUDENCE 

manners and professed tenets were those of some 
known and allowed body of men. 

I ask then, what is the fact? We are — and, 
till its good purposes, which are many, have been 
all achieved, and we can become something better, 
long may we continue such ! — a busy, enterprising, 
and commercial nation. The habits attached to 
this character must, if there exist no adequate 
counterpoise, inevitably lead us, under the specious 
names of utility, practical knowledge, and so forth, 
to look at all things through the medium of the 
market, and to estimate the worth of all pursuits 
and attainments by their marketable value. In 
this does the spirit of trade consist. Now would 
the general experience bear us out in the assertion, 
that amid the absence or declension of all other 
antagonist forces, there is found in the very circle 
of the trading and opulent themselves, in the in- 
crease, namely, of religious professors among them, 
a spring of resistance to the excess of the com- 
mercial impetus, from the impressive example of 
their unworldly feelings evidenced by their mode- 
ration in worldly pursuits ? I fear, that we may 
anticipate the answer wherever the religious zeal 
of such professors does not likewise manifest itself 
by the glad devotion of as large a portion of their 
time and industry, as the duty of providing a fair 
competence for themselves and their families leaves 
at their own disposal, to the comprehension of 
those inspired writings and the evolution of those 
pregnant truths, which are proposed for our ear- 
nest, sedulous research, in order that by occupying 






WITH UNCHRISTIAN TEMPER. 383 

our understandings they may more and more assi- 
milate our affections, I fear, that the inquiring 
traveller would more often hear of zealous reli- 
gionists who have read (and as a duty too and with 
all due acquiescence) the prophetic, Wo to them 
that join house to house and lay field to field, 
that they may be alone in the land ! — and yet 
find no object deform the beauty of the prospect 
from their window or even from their castle turrets 
so annoyingly, as a meadow not their own, or a 
field under ploughing with the beam- end of the 
plough in the hands of its humble owner ! I fear 
that he must too often make report of men lawful 
in their dealings, Scriptural in their language, 
alms-givers, and patrons of Sunday schools, who 
are yet resistless and overawing bidders at all land 
auctions in their neighbourhood^ who live in the 
centre of farms without leases, and tenants without 
attachments ! Or if his way should lie through 
our great towns and manufacturing districts, in- 
stances would grow cheap with him of wealthy 
religious practitioners, who never travel for orders 
without cards of edification in prose and verse, 
and small tracts of admonition and instruction, all 
" plain and easy, and suited to the meanest capa- 
cities ;" who pray daily, as the first act of the 
morning and as the last of the evening, Lead 
us not into temptation ; but deliver us from evil ! 
and employ all the interval with an edge of appetite 
keen as the scythe of death in the pursuit of yet 
more and yet more of a temptation so perilous, 
that (as they have full often read, and heard read, 



384 QUAKER NEGLECT 

without the least questioning, or whisper of doubt) 
no power short of omnipotence could make their 
deliverance from it credible or conceivable. Of 
all denominations of Christians, there is not one 
in existence or on record whose whole scheme of 
faith and worship was so expressly framed for the 
one purpose of spiritualizing' the mind and of ab- 
stracting it from the vanities of the world, as the 
Society of Friends, not one, in which the members 
are connected, and their professed principles en- 
forced, by so effective and wonderful a form of 
discipline. But in the zeal of their founders and 
first proselytes for perfect spirituality they excluded 
from their system all ministers specially trained 
and educated for the ministry, with all professional 
theologians : and they omitted to provide for the 
raising up among themselves any other established 
class of learned men, as teachers and schoolmasters 
for instance, in their stead. Even at this day, 
though the Quakers are in general remarkably 
shrewd and intelligent in all worldly concerns, yet 
learning, and more particularly theological learning, 
is more rare among them in proportion to their 
wealth and rank in life, and holden in less value, 
than among any other known sect of Christians. 
What has bee the result ? If the occasion per- 
mitted, I could dilate with pleasure on their decent 
manners and decorous morals, as individuals, and 
their exemplary and truly illustrious philanthropic 
efforts as a Society. From all the gay and tinsel 
vanities of the world their discipline has preserved 



OF LEARNING : 385 

them, and the English character owes to their ex- 
ample some part of its manly plainness in externals. 
But my argument is confined to the question, 
whether religion in its present state and under the 
present conceptions of its demands and purposes 
does, even among the most religious, exert any 
efficient force of control over the commercial spirit, 
the excess of which we have attributed not to the 
extent and magnitude of the commerce itself, but 
to the absence or imperfection of its appointed 
checks and counteragents. Now as the system of 
the Friends in its first intention is of all others 
most hostile to worldly- mindedness on the one 
hand ; and as, on the other, the adherents of this 
system both in confession and practice confine 
Christianity to feelings and motives ; they may be 
selected as representatives of the strict, but un- 
studied and uninquiring, religionists of every de- 
nomination. Their characteristic propensities will 
supply, therefore, no unfair test for the degree of 
resistance, which our present Christianity is ca- 
pable of opposing to the cupidity of a trading- 
people. That species of Christianity I mean, 
which, as far as knowledge and the faculties of 
thought are concerned, — which, as far as the growth 
and grandeur of the intellectual m .1 is in question 
— is to be learnt ex tempore ! A Christianity 
poured in on the catechumen all and all at once, 
as from a shower-bath : and which, whatever it 
may be in the heart, yet for the understanding 
and reason is from boyhood onward a thing past 
c c 



386 ITS RESULT. 

and perfected. If the almost universal opinion be 
tolerably correct, the question is answered. But 
I by no means appropriate the remark to the 
wealthy Quakers, or even apply it to them in any 
particular or eminent sense, when I say, that often 
as the motley reflexes of my experience move in 
long procession of manifold groups before me, the 
distinguished and world-honored company of Chris- 
tian Mammonists appears to the eye of my imagi- 
nation as a drove of camels heavily laden, yet all 
at full speed, and each in the confident expectation 
of passing through the eye of the needle, without 
stop or halt, both beast and baggage. 

Not without an uneasy reluctance have I ven- 
tured to tell the truth on this subject, lest I should 
be charged with the indulgence of a satirical mood 
and an uncharitable spleen. But my conscience 
bears me witness, and I know myself too near the 
grave to trifle with its name, that I am solely 
actuated by a sense of the exceeding importance 
of the subject at the present moment. I feel it an 
awful duty to exercise the honest liberty of free 
utterance in so dear a concernment as that of pre- 
paring my country for a change in its external 
relations, which must come sooner or later ; which 
I believe to have already commenced ; and that it 
will depend on the presence or absence of a corres- 
ponding change in the mind of the nation, and 
above all in the aims and ruling opinions of our 
gentry and monied men, whether it is to cast down 
our strength and prosperity, or to fix them on a 



PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS I 387 

firmer and more august basis. " Surely to every 
good and peaceable man it must in nature needs 
be a hateful thing to be the displeaser and molester 
of thousands;* * * but when God commands to take 
the trumpet and blow a dolorous or a jarring blast, 
it lies not in man's will what he shall say and what 
he shall conceal."* 

That my complaints, both in this and in my 
former Lay Sermon, concerning the same errors, 
are not grounded on any peculiar notions of mine, 
the following remarks of a great and good man, 
not less illustrious for his piety and fervent zeal as 
a Christian, than for his acuteness and profundity 
as a philosopher, may, perhaps, be accepted as 
proof. 

" Prevailing studies," he observes, " are of no 
small consequence to a state, the religion, manners, 
and civil government of a country ever taking some 
bias from its philosophy, which affects not only the 
minds of its professors and students, but also the 
opinions of all the better sort, and the practice of 
the whole people, remotely and consequentially 
indeed, though not inconsiderably. Have not the 
doctrines of necessity and materialism, with the 
consequent denial of man's responsibility, of his 
corrupt and fallen nature, and of the whole scheme 
of Redemption by the incarnate Word gained 
ground during the general passion for the corpus- 



Milton. Reason of Church Government, B. II. Introd. 

Ed. 



388 THEIR POLITICAL 

cularian and experimental philosophy which hath 
prevailed about a century ? This indeed might 
usefully enough have employed some share of the 
leisure and curiosity of inquisitive persons. But 
when it entered the seminaries of learning, as a 
necessary accomplishment and as the most im- 
portant part of knowledge, by engrossing men's 
thoughts and fixing their minds so much on cor- 
poreal objects, it hath, however undesignedly, not 
a little indisposed them for spiritual, moral, and 
intellectual matters. Certainly, had the philosophy 
of Pythagoras and Socrates prevailed in this age, 
we should not have seen interest take so general 
and fast hold on the minds of men. But while 
the employment of the mind on things purely 
intellectual is to most men irksome, whereas the 
sensitive powers by our constant use of them, 
acquire strength, the objects of sense are too often 
counted the chief good. For these things men 
fight, cheat, and scramble. Therefore, in order to 
tame mankind and introduce a sense of virtue, the 
best human means is to exercise their under- 
standing, to give them a glimpse of a world supe- 
rior to the sensible ; and while they take pains to 
cherish and maintain the animal life, to teach them 
not to neglect the intellectual. 

" It might very well be thought serious trifling 
to tell my readers that the greatest men had ever 
a high esteem for Plato ; whose writings are the 
touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind ; whose 



IMPORTANCE. 389 

philosophy, the admiration of ages, supplied patriots, 
magistrates, and lawgivers to the most nourishing 
states, as well as Fathers to the Church, and Doc- 
tors to the Schools. In these days the depths of 
that old learning are rarely fathomed : and yet it 
were happy for these lands, if our young nobility 
and gentry instead of modern maxims would im- 
bibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. 
But in this free-thinking time, many an empty 
head is shook at Aristotle and Plato : and the 
waitings of these celebrated ancients are by most 
men treated on a level with the dry and barbarous 
lucubrations of the Schoolmen. It may, however, 
be modestly presumed that there are not many 
among us, even of those that are called the better 
sort, who have more sense, virtue, and love of their 
country than Cicero, who in a letter to Atticus 
could not forbear exclaiming, Socrates et Socra- 
tici viri ! nunquam vobis gratiam refer am. Would 
to God, many of our countrymen had the same obli- 
gations to those Socratic writers ! Certainly, where 
the people are well educated, the art of piloting a 
state is best learnt from the writing's of Plato. But 
among a people void of discipline and a gentry 
devoted to vulgar cares and views, Plato, Pytha- 
goras, and Aristotle themselves, were they living, 
could do but little good." 

Thus, then, of the three most approved antago- 
nists to the spirit of barter, and the accompanying- 
disposition to overvalue riches with all the means 



390 SPIRIT OF TRADE UNCHECKED : 

and tokens thereof — of the three fittest and most 
likely checks to this tendency, namely, the feeling 
of ancient birth and the respect paid to it by the 
community at large ; a genuine intellectual phi- 
losophy with an accredited, learned, and philo- 
sophic class ; and lastly, religion ; we have found 
the first declining, the second not existing, and 
the third efficient, indeed, in many respects and 
to many excellent purposes, only not in this par- 
ticular direction : the religion here spoken of, 
having long since parted company with that inqui- 
sitive and bookish theology which tends to defraud 
the student of his worldly wisdom, inasmuch as it 
diverts his mind from the accumulation of wealth 
by pre-occupying his thoughts in the acquisition of 
knowledge. For the religion of best repute among 
us holds all the truths of Scripture and all the doc- 
trines of Christianity so very transcendant, or so 
very easy, as to make study and research either 
vain or needless. It professes, therefore, to hunger 
and thirst after righteousness alone, and the rewards 
of the righteous ; and thus habitually taking for 
granted all truths of spiritual import leaves the un- 
derstanding vacant and at leisure for a thorough 
insight into present and temporal interests : which, 
doubtless, is the true reason why its followers are 
in general such shrewd, knowing, wary, well-in- 
formed, thrifty and thriving men of business. But 
this is likewise the reason, why it neither does nor 
can check or circumscribe the spirit of barter ; and 
to the consequent monoply which this commercial 






ITS PROGRESS. 391 

spirit possesses, must its over-balance be attributed, 
not tbe extent or magnitude of the commerce itself. 
Before I enter on the result assigned by me as 
the chief ultimate cause of the present state of the 
country, and as the main ground on which the im- 
mediate occasions of the general distress have 
worked, I must entreat my readers to reflect that 
the spirit of trade has been a thing of insensible 
growth; that whether it be enough, or more or 
less than enough, is a matter of relative, rather 
than of positive, determination ; that it depends on 
the degree in which it is aided or resisted by all the 
other tendencies that co-exist with it; and that 
in the best of times this spirit may be said to live on 
a narrow isthmus, between a sterile desert and a 
stormy sea, still threatened and encroached on either 
by the too much or the too little. As the argument 
does not depend on any precise accuracy in the 
dates, I shall assume it to have commenced as an 
influencing part of the national character, with the 
institution of the public funds in the reign of Wil- 
liam III., and from the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle 
in 1748, to have been hurrying onward to its maxi- 
mum, which it seems to have attained during the 
late war. The short interruptions may be well 
represented as a few steps backward, that it might 
leap forward with an additional momentum. The 
words, old and modern, then and now are applied 
by me, the former to the interval between the 
Reformation and the Revolution ; and the latter 
to the whole period since the Revolution ; the one 



392 CONTRAST OF RELIGIOUS CHARACTER 

from 1460 to 1680, the other from 1680 to the pre- 
sent time. 

Having premised this explanation, I can now 
return an intelligible answer to a question, that 
will have risen in the reader's mind during his 
perusal of the last three or four pages. How, it 
will be objected, does all this apply to the present 
times in particular? When was the industrious 
part of mankind not attached to the pursuits most 
likely to reward their industry ? Was the wish to 
make a fortune, or, if you prefer an invidious phrase, 
the lust of lucre, less natural to our forefathers than 
to their descendants ? If you say that though a 
not less frequent, nor less powerful passion with 
them than with us, it yet met with a more frequent 
and more powerful check, a stronger and more ad- 
vanced boundary-line in the religion of old times, 
and in the faith, fashion, habits, and authority of 
the religious : in what did this difference consist ; 
and in what way did these points of difference act ? 
If indeed the antidote in question once possessed 
virtues which it no longer possesses, or not in the 
same degree, what is the ingredient, either added, 
omitted, or diminished since that time, which can 
have rendered it less efficacious now than then ? 

Well ! (I might reply) grant all this : and let 
both the profession and the professors of a spiritual 
principle, as a counterpoise to the worldly weights 
at the other end of the balance, be supposed much 
the same in one age as in the other. Assume for a 
moment, that I can establish neither the fact of its 



BEFORE AND SINCE THE REVOLUTION. 393 

present lesser efficiency, nor any points of difference 
capable of accounting for it. Yet it might still be 
a sufficient answer to this objection, that as the 
commerce of the country, and with it the spirit of 
commerce, has increased fifty-fold since the com- 
mencement of the latter period, it is not enough 
that the counterweight should be as great as it was 
in the former period : to remain the same in its 
effect, it ought to have become very much greater. 
But though this be a consideration not less impor- 
tant than it is obvious, yet I do not purpose to rest 
in it. I affirm that a difference may be shown, 
and of no trifling importance as to that one point, 
to which my present argument is confined. For 
let it be remembered that it is not to any extraor- 
dinary influences of the religious principle that I 
am referring, not to voluntary poverty, or seques- 
tration from social and active life, or schemes of 
mortification. I speak of religion merely as I 
should of any worldly object, which, as far as it 
employs and interests a man, leaves less room in his 
mind for other pursuits : except that this must be 
more especially the case in the instance of religion, 
because beyond all other interests it is calculated 
to occupy the whole mind, and employ successively 
all the faculties of man ; and because the objects 
which it presents to the imagination as well as to 
the intellect cannot be actually contemplated, much 
less can they be the subject of frequent meditation, 
without dimming the lustre and blunting the rays 
of all rival attractions. It is well known, and has 



394 THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE 

been observed of old, that poetry tends to render 
its devotees* careless of money and outward ap- 
pearances, while philosophy inspires a contempt of 
both as objects of desire or admiration. But religion 
is the poetry and philosophy of all mankind ; unites 
in itself whatever is most excellent in either, and 
while it at one and the same time calls into action 
and supplies with the noblest materials both the 
imaginative and the intellective faculties, superadds 
the interests of the most substantial and home-felt 
reality to both, to the poetic vision and the philo- 
sophic idea. But in order to produce a similar effect 
it must act in a similar way ; it must reign in the 
thoughts of a man and in the powers akin to thought, 
as well as exercise an admitted influence over his 
hopes and fears, and through these on his delibe- 
rate and individual acts. 

Now as my first presumptive proof of a differ- 
ence (I might almost have said, of a contrast) 
between the religious character of the period since 
the Revolution, and that of the period from the 
accession of Edward VI to the abdication of 
James II, I refer to the sermons and to the theolo- 



Hic error tamen et levis hcec insania quantas 

Virtutes habeat, sic collige : vatis avarus 

Non temere est animus ; versus amat, hoc studet unum ; 

Detrimenta, fugas servorum, incendia ridet; 

Nonfraudem socio, puerove incogitat ullam 

Pupillo ; vivit siliquis et pane secundo : 

Militice quanquam piger et malus, utilis urbi, 

Horat. Epist. II. I. 118. 



OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY I 395 

gical works generally of the latter period. It is 
my full conviction that in any half dozen sermons of 
Donne, or Taylor, there are more thoughts, more 
facts and images, more excitements to inquiry and 
intellectual effort, than are presented to the congre- 
gations of the present day in as many churches or 
meetings during twice as many months. Yet both 
these were the most popular preachers of their 
times, were heard with enthusiasm by crowded and 
promiscuous audiences, and the effect produced by 
their eloquence was holden in reverential and affec- 
tionate remembrance by many attendants on their 
ministry, who, like the pious Isaac Walton, were 
not themselves men of much learning or education. 
In addition to this fact, think likewise on the large 
and numerous editions of massy, closely printed 
folios : the impressions so large and the editions so 
numerous, that all the industry of destruction for 
the last hundred years has but of late sufficed to 
make them rare. From the long list select those 
works alone, which we know to have been the most 
current and favourite works of their day: and of 
these again no more than may well be supposed to 
have had a place in the scantiest libraries, or per- 
haps with the Bible and Common Prayer Book to 
have formed the library of their owner. Yet on 
the single shelf so filled we should find almost every 
possible question, that could interest or instruct a 
reader whose whole heart was in his religion, dis- 
cussed with a command of intellect that seems to 
exhaust all the learning and logic, all the historical 



396 ITS PREACHERS 

and moral relations, of each several subject. The 
very length of the discourses, with which these 
rich souls of wit and knowledge fixed the eyes, 
ears, and hearts of their crowded congregations, 
are a source of wonder now-a-days, and (we may 
add) of self-congratulation, to many a sober Chris- 
tian, who forgets with what delight he himself has 
listened to a two hours' harangue on a loan or tax, 
or at the trial of some remarkable cause or culprit. 
The transfer of the interest makes and explains 
the whole difference. For though much may be 
fairly charged on the revolution in the mode of 
preaching as well as in the matter, since the fresh 
morning and fervent noon of the Reformation, 
when there was no need to visit the conventicles 
of fanaticism m order to 

See God's ambassador in pulpit stand, 

Where they could take notes from his look and hand ; 

And from his speaking action bear away 

More sermon than our preachers use to say ; 

yet this too must be referred to the same change 
in the habits of men's minds, a change that in- 
volves both the shepherd and the flock : though 
like many other effects, it tends to reproduce and 
strengthen its own cause. 

The last point, to which I shall appeal, is the 
warmth and frequency of the religious controver- 
sies during the former of the two periods ; the 
deep interest excited by them among all but the 
lowest and most ignorant classes ; the importance 
attached to them by the very highest ; the number, 



AND CONTROVERSIALISTS. 397 

and in many instances the transcendant merit, of 
the controversial publications — in short, the rank 
and value assigned to polemic divinity. The sub- 
jects of the controversies may or may not have 
been trifling ; the warmth with which they were 
conducted, may have been disproportionate and in- 
decorous ; and we may have reason to congratulate 
ourselves that the age in which we live, is grown 
more indulgent and less captious. The fact is intro- 
duced not for its own sake, but as a symptom of the 
general state of men's feelings, and as an evidence 
of the direction and main channel, in which the 
thoughts and interests of men were then flowing. 
We all know that lovers are apt to take offence and 
wrangle with each other on occasions that perhaps 
are but trifles, and which assuredly would appear 
such to those who had never been under the in- 
fluence of a similar passion. These quarrels may 
be no proofs of wisdom ; but still in the imperfect 
state of our nature the entire absence of the same, 
and this too on far more serious provocations, 
would excite a strong suspicion of a comparative 
indifference in the feelings of the parties towards 
each other, who can love so coolly where they pro- 
fess to love so well. I shall believe our present 
religious tolerancy to proceed from the abundance 
of our charity and good sense, when I can see 
proofs that we are equally cool and forbearing as 
litigators and political partizans. And I must 
again intreat my reader to recollect that the pre- 
sent argument is exclusively concerned with the 



398 MODERN SYNCRETISM I 

requisite correctives of the commercial spirit, and 
with religion therefore no otherwise than as a 
counter- charm to the sorcery of wealth : and my 
main position is, that neither by reasons drawn 
from the nature of the human mind, nor by facts 
of actual experience, are we justified in expecting 
this from a religion which does not employ and 
actuate the understandings- of men, and combine 
their affections with it as a system of truth grad- 
ually and progressively manifesting itself to the 
intellect ; no less than as a system of motives and 
moral commands learnt as soon as heard, and con- 
taining nothing but what is plain and easy to the 
lowest capacities. Hence it is that objects, the 
ostensible principle of which I have felt it my duty 
to oppose,* and objects, which and the measures 
for the attainment of which possess my good wishes 
and have had the humble tribute of my public ad- 
vocacy and applause — I am here alluding to the 
British and Foreign Bible Society— may yet con- 
verge, as to the point now in question. They may, 
both alike, be symptoms of the same predominant 
disposition to that coalition-system in Christianity, 
for the expression of which theologians have in- 
vented or appropriated the term, Syncretism :f 

* See supra, p. 241. — Ed. 

t Clementia Evangelica (writes a German theologian of 
the last century) quasi matrona habenda est, purioris doctrine 
custos, mitis quidem, at sedula tamen, at vigilans, at seduc- 
torum impatiens. Iste vero Syncretismus, quern Laodiceni apud 
nos tantopefe collaudant, nusquam a me nisi meretrix audiet, 



ITS EFFECTS. 399 

although the former may be an ominous, the latter 
an auspicious symptom ; though the one may be 
worse from bad, while the other is an instance of 
good educed from evil. Nay, I will dare confess 
that I know not how to think otherwise, when I 
hear a Bishop of the Church publicly exclaim, — 
(and not viewing it as a lesser inconvenience to be 
endured for the attainment of a far greater good, 
but as a thing desirable and to be preferred for its 
own sake) — No notes ! No comment ! Distribute 
the Bible and the Bible only among the poor! — 
a declaration which from any lower quarter I 
should have been under the temptation of attri- 
buting either to a fanatical notion of immediate 
illumination superseding the necessity of human 
teaching, or to an ignorance of difficulties which 
(and what more worthy ?) have successfully em- 
ployed all the learning, sagacity, and unwearied 
labors of great and wise men, and eminent servants 



Jidei vel pigra vel status sui ignarce proles, postea autem indolis 
secularis genetrix, et quacum nee sincera Jides, nee genuina 
caritas commorariferet. 

The true Gospel spirit of toleration we should regard as a 
matron, a kind and gentle guardian indeed of the pure doc- 
trine, but sedulous, but vigilant, but impatient of seducers. 
This Syncretism on the contrary, which the Loadiceans 
among us join in extolling so highly, shall no where hear 
from me other or better name than that of harlot, the offspring 
of a belief either slothful or ignorant of its own condition, 
and then the parent of worldly-mindedness, and with whom 
therefore neither sincere faith nor genuine charity will en- 
dure to associate. 



400 OVERBALANCE OF COMMERCIAL SPIRIT 

of Christ, during all the ages of Christianity, and 
will doubtless continue to yield new fruits of know- 
ledge and insight to a long series of followers.* 

Though an overbalance of the commercial spirit 
is involved in the deficiency of its counterweights ; 
yet the facts that exemplify the mode and extent 
of its operation will afford a more direct and satis- 
factory kind of proof. And first I am to speak of 
this overbalance as displayed in the commercial 
world itself. But as this is the first, so is it for 
my present purpose the least important point of 
view. A portion of the facts belonging to this 
division of the subject I have already noticed ; 
and for the remainder let the following suffice as 
the substitute or representative. The moral of 
the tale I leave to the reader's own reflections. 
Within the last sixty years or perhaps a somewhat 
larger period, (for I do not pretend to any nicety 
of dates, and the documents are of easy access) 
there have occurred at intervals of about twelve or 
thirteen years each, certain periodical revolutions 

* I am well aware that by these open avowals, that with 
much to honor and praise in many, there is something to 
correct in all, parties, I shall provoke many enemies and make 
never a friend. If I dared abstain, how gladly should I have 
so done ! Would that the candid part of my judges would 
peruse or re- peruse the affecting and most eloquent intro- 
ductory pages of Milton's second book of his " Reason of 
Church Government urged, &c," and give me the credit, 
which my conscience bears me witness I am entitled to claim, 
for all the moral feelings expressed in that exquisite pas- 
sage. 






IN THE COMMERCIAL WORLD. 401 

of credit. Yet revolution is not the precise word. 
To state the thing as it is, I ought to have said, 
certain gradual expansions of credit ending in 
sudden contractions, or, with equal propriety, as- 
censions to a certain utmost possible height, which 
has been different in each successive instance ; but 
in every instance the attainment of this its ne plus 
ultra has been instantly announced by a rapid se- 
ries of explosions (in mercantile language, a crash) 
and a consequent precipitation of the general sys- 
tem. For a short time this Icarian credit, or ra- 
ther this illegitimate offspring of confidence, to 
which it stands in the same relation as Phaeton 
to his parent god in the old fable, seems to lie 
stunned by the fall ; but soon recovering, again it 
strives upward, and having once more regained its 
mid region, 

-thence many a league, 



As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides 
Audacious ; — 

till at the destined zenith of its vaporous* exalta- 
tion, 

All unawares, fluttering its pennons vain,— 
Plumb down it drops. — 

Or that I may descend myself to the cool element 
of prose, — alarm and suspicion gradually diminish 
into a judicious circumspectness ; but by little and 
little, circumspection gives way to the desire and 
emulous ambition of doing business : till impa- 
tience and incaution on the one side, tempting and 

D D 



402 MORAL DEPRAVATION 

encouraging headlong 1 adventure, want of principle, 
and confederacies of false credit on the other, the 
movements of trade become yearly gayer and gid- 
dier, and end at length in a vortex of hopes and 
hazards, of blinding passions and blind practices, 
which should have been left where alone they ought 
ever to have been found, among the wicked luna- 
cies of the gaming table. 

I am not ignorant that the power and circum- 
stantial prosperity of the nation has been increas- 
ing during the same period, with an accelerated 
force unprecedented in any country, the popula- 
tion of which bears the same proportion to its pro- 
ductive soil ; and partly, perhaps, even in conse- 
quence of this system. By facilitating the means 
of enterprise, it must have called into activity a 
multitude of enterprising individuals and a variety 
of talent that would otherwise have lain dormant : 
while by the same ready supply of excitements to 
labor, together with its materials and instruments, 
even an unsound credit has been able within a 
short time to* substantiate itself. I shall perhaps 
be told too, that the very evils of this system even 
the periodical crash itself, are to be regarded but 

* If by the display of forged Bank notes a speculator 
should establish the belief of his being a man of large fortune, 
and gain a temporary confidence in his own paper-money ; 
and if by large wages so paid he should stimulate a number 
of indolent Highlanders to bring a tract of waste land into 
profitable cultivation, the promissory notes of the owner, 
which derived their first value from a delusion, would end in 



IN THE LABOURING 403 

as so much superfluous steam ejected by the escape 
pipes, and safety valves of a self-regulating ma- 
chine : and lastly, that in a free and trading country 
all things find their level. 

I have as little disposition as motive to recant 
the principles, which in many forms and through 
various channels I have labored to propagate ; but 
there is surely no inconsistency in yielding all due 
honor to the spirit of trade, and yet charging sun- 
dry evils which weaken or reverse its blessings on 
the over-balance of that spirit, taken as the para- 
mount principle of action in the nation at large. 
Much I still concede to the arguments for the 
present scheme of things, as adduced in the pre- 
ceding paragraph : but I likewise see, and always 
have seen, much that needs winnowing. Thus in- 
stead of the position, that all things find, it would 
be less equivocal and far more descriptive of the 
fact to say, that things are always finding, their 
level : which might be taken as the paraphrase or 
ironical definition of a storm. But persons are 
not things — but man does not find his level. 
Neither in body nor in soul does the man find his 
level. After a hard and calamitous season, during 

representing a real property, and this their own product. A 
most improbable case ! In its accidental features, I reply, 
rather than in its essentials. How many thousand acres have 
been reclaimed from utter unproductiveness, how many 
doubled in value, by the agency of notes issued beyond the 
bona fide capital of the bank or firm that circulated them, or 
at best on capital afloat and insecure. 



404 AND TRADING 

which the thousand wheels of some vast manufac- 
tory had remained silent as a frozen water-fall, be 
it that plenty has returned and that trade has once 
more become brisk and stirring" : go, ask the over- 
seer, and question the parish doctor, whether the 
workman's health and temperance with the staid 
and respectful manners best taught by the inward 
dignity of conscious self-support, have found their 
level again ! Alas ! I have more than once seen 
a group of children in Dorsetshire, during the heat 
of the dog-days, each with its little shoulders up 
to its ears, and its chest pinched inward, the very 
habit and fixures, as it were, that had been im- 
pressed on their frames by the former ill-fed, ill- 
clothed, and unfuelled winters. But as with the 
body, so or still worse with the mind. Nor is the 
effect confined to the labouring classes, whom by 
an ominous but too appropriate change in our phra- 
seology we are now accustomed to call the labour- 
ing poor. I cannot persuade myself that the fre- 
quency of failures with all the disgraceful secrets 
of fraud and folly, of unprincipled vanity in ex- 
pending and desperate speculation in retrieving, 
can be familiarized to the thoughts and experience 
of men, as matters of daily occurrence, without 
serious injury to the moral sense : more especially 
in times when bankruptcies spread, like a fever, 
at once contagious and epidemic ; swift too as the 
travel of an earthquake, that with one and the 
same chain of shocks opens the ruinous chasm in 
cities that have an ocean between them !— in times, 



CLASSES. 405 

when the fate flies swifter than the fear, and yet 
the report, that follows the flash, has a ruin of its 
own and arrives but to multiply the blow ! — when 
princely capitals are often but the telegraphs of 
distant calamity : and still worse, when no man's 
treasure is safe who has adopted the ordinary means 
of safety, neither the high nor the humble ; when 
the lord's rents and the farmer's store, entrusted 
perhaps but as yesterday, are asked after at closed 
doors ! — but worst of all, in its moral influences as 
well as in the cruelty of suffering, when the old 
labourer's savings, the precious robberies of self- 
denial from every day's comfort ; when the orphan's 
funds ; the widow's livelihood ; the fond confiding 
sister's humble fortune ; are found among the vic- 
tims to the remorseless mania of dishonest specu- 
lation, or to the desperate cowardice of embarrass- 
ment, and the drunken stupor of a usurious selfish- 
ness which for a few months respite dares incur a 
debt of guilt and infamy, for which the grave itself 
can plead no statute of limitation. Name to me any 
revolution recorded in history, that was not followed 
by a depravation of the national morals. The Ro- 
man character during the Triumvirate, and under 
Tiberius ; the reign of Charles II. and Paris at the 
present moment,— are obvious instances. What 
is the main cause ? The sense of insecurity. On 
what ground then dare we hope that with the same 
accompaniment, commercial revolutions should not 
produce the same effect, in proportion to the extent 
of their sphere ? 



406 INCIDENTS 

But these blessings — with all the specific terms, 
into which this most comprehensive phrase is to 
be resolved ? Dare we unpack the bales and cases 
so marked, and look at the articles, one by one ? 
Increase of human life and increase of the means 
of life are, it is true, reciprocally cause and effect : 
and the genius of commerce and manufacture has 
been the cause of both to a degree that may well 
excite our wonder. But do the last results justify 
our exultation likewise ? Human life, alas ! is 
but the malleable metal, out of which the thievish 
picklock, the slave's collar, and the assassin's 
stiletto are formed as well as the clearing axe, 
the feeding plough-share, the defensive sword, and 
the mechanic tool. But the subject is a painful 
one : and fortunately the labours of others, with 
the communications of medical men concerning the 
state of the manufacturing poor, have rendered it 
unnecessary. I will rather (though in strict me- 
thod it should, perhaps, be reserved for the follow- 
ing head) relate a speech made to me near Fort 
Augustus, as I was travelling on foot through the 
Highlands of Scotland. The speaker was an elderly 
and respectable widow, who expressed herself with 
that simple eloquence, which strong feeling seldom 
fails to call forth in humble life, but especially in 
women. She spoke English, as indeed most High- 
landers do who speak it at all, with a propriety 
of phrase and a discrimination of tone and empha- 
sis that more than compensated for the scantiness 
of her vocabulary. After an affecting account of 



IN THE HIGHLANDS. 407 

her own wrongs and ejectment, (which however, 
she said, bore with comparative lightness on her, 
who had saved up a wherewithal to live, and was 
blessed with a son well to do in the world,) she 
made a movement with her hand in a circle, di- 
recting my eye meanwhile to various objects as 
marking its outline: and then observed, with a 
deep sigh and a suppressed and slow voice which 
she suddenly raised and quickened after the first 
drop or cadence : — " Within this space — how short 
a time back ! there lived a hundred and seventy- 
three persons : and now there is only a shepherd, 
and an underling or two. Yes, Sir ! One hun- 
dred and seventy-three Christian souls, man, wo- 
man, boy, girl, and babe ; and in almost every 
home an old man by the fire-side, who would tell 
you of the troubles before our roads were made ; 
and many a brave youth among them who loved 
the birth-place of his forefathers, yet would swing 
about his broad sword and w r ant but a word to 
march off to the battles over sea : aye, Sir, and 
many a good lass, who had a respect for herself! 
Well! but they are gone, and with them the bris- 
tled bear,* and the pink haver, t and the potatoe 
plot that looked as gay as any flower-garden with 
its blossoms ! I sometimes fancy that the very 
birds are gone, all but the crows and the gleads ! 
Well, and what then ? Instead of us all, there is 
one shepherd man, and it may be a pair of small 

* A species of barley. t A species of oats. 



408 INCIDENTS 

lads — and a many, many sheep ! And do you think, 
Sir ! that God allows of such proceedings ? " 

Some days before this conversation, and while I 
was on the shores of Loch Katrine,]: I had heard 
of a sad counterpart to the widow's tale, and told 
with a far fiercer indignation, of a a Laird who 
had raised a company from the country round 
about, for the love that was borne to his name, and 
who gained high preferment in consequence : and 
that it was but a small part of those that he took 
away whom he brought back again. And what 
were the thanks which the folks had both for those 
that came back with him, some blind, and more 
in danger of blindness ; and for those that had pe- 
rished in the hospitals, and for those that fell in 
battle, fighting before or beside him ? Why, that 
their fathers were all turned out of their farms 
before the year w 7 as over, and sent to wander like 
so many gipsies, unless they would consent to shed 
their grey hairs, at ten-pence a day, over the new 
canals. Had there been a price set upon his head, 
and his enemies had been coming upon him, he 
needed but have whistled, and a hundred brave 
lads would have made a wall of flame round about 

t The Lake so widely celebrated since then by a poet, to 
whose writings a larger number of persons have owed a 
larger portion of innocent, refined, and heart-bettering 
amusement, than perhaps to any favourite of the Muses 
recorded in English literature : while the most learned of 
his readers must feel grateful for the mass of interesting 
and highly instructive information scattered throughout his 
works, in which respect Southey is his only rival. 



IN THE HIGHLANDS. 409 

him with the flash of their broad- swords ! Now if 
the French should come among us, as (it is said) 
they will, let him whistle to his sheep and see if they 
will fight for him ! " The frequency with which I 
heard, during my solitary walk from the end of 
Loch-Lomond to Inverness, confident expectations 
of the kind expressed in his concluding words — nay, 
far too often eager hopes mingled with vindictive 
resolves — I spoke of with complaint and regret to 
an elderly man, whom by his dress and way of 
speaking I took to be a schoolmaster. Long shall 
I recollect his reply: " O, Sir, it kills a man's love 
for his country, the hardships of life coming by 
change and with injustice !" I was sometime af- 
terwards told by a very sensible person who had 
studied the mysteries of political economy, and was 
therefore entitled to be listened to,' that more food 
was produced in consequence of this revolution, 
that the mutton must be eaten somewhere, and what 
difference where ? If three w r ere fed at Manchester 
instead of two at Glencoe or the Trosachs, the 
balance of human enjoyment was in favour of the 
former.' I have passed through many a manufac- 
turing town since then, and have watched many a 
group of old and young, male and female, going 
to, or returning from, many a factory, but I could 
never yet persuade myself to be of his opinion. 
Men, I still think, ought to be weighed not counted. 
Their worth ought to be the final estimate of their 
value. 

Among the occasions and minor causes of this 



410 ENHANCEMENT OF PRICES '. 

change in the views and measures of our land- 
owners, and as being itself a consequent on that 
system of credit, the outline of which was given 
in a preceding page, the universal practice of en- 
hancing the sale price of every article on the pre- 
sumption of bad debts, is not the least noticeable. 
Nor, if we reflect that this additional per centage 
is repeated at each intermediate stage of its elabo- 
ration and distribution from the grower or importer 
to the last retailer inclusively, will it appear the 
least operative. Necessary, and therefore justi- 
fiable, as this plan of reprisal by anticipation may 
be in the case of each individual dealer, yet taken 
collectively and without reference to persons, the 
plan itself would, I suspect, startle an unfamilia- 
rized conscience, as a sort of non-descript piracy, 
not promiscuous in its exactions only because by 
a curious anomaly it grants a free pass to the of- 
fending party. Or if the law maxim, volentibus 
non fit injuria, is applicable in this case, it may 
perhaps be described more courteously as a Benefit 
Society of all the careful and honest men in the 
kingdom to pay the debts of the dishonest or im- 
provident. It is mentioned here, however, as one 
of the appendages to the twin paramount causes, the 
paper currency and the national debt, and for the 
sake of the conjoint results. Would we learn what 
these results are ; — what they have been in the 
higher, and what in the most numerous, class of 
society ? Alas ! that some of the intermediate 
rounds in the social ladder have been broken and 



ITS EFFECTS. 411 

not replaced, is itself one of these results, Re- 
trace the progress of things from 1792 to 1813, when 
the tide was at its height, and then as far as its ra- 
pidity will permit, the ebb from its first turn to the 
dead low-water mark of the last quarter. Then 
see whether the remainder may not be generalized 
under the following heads. Fluctuation in the 
wages of labor, alternate privation and excess (not 
in all at the same time, but successively in each) 
consequent improvidence, and over all discontent 
and a system of factious confederacy : — these 
form the history of the mechanics and lower ranks 
of our cities and towns. In the country a peasantry 
sinking into pauperism, step for step with the rise 
of the farmer's profits and indulgencies. On the 
side of the landlord and his compeers, we shall find 
the presence of the same causes attested by an- 
swerable effects. Great as their almost magical 
effects* were on the increase of prices in the neces- 
saries of life, they were still greater, dispropor- 
tionally greater, in all articles of shew and luxury. 
With few exceptions, it soon became difficult, and 

* During the composition of this sheet I have had and 
availed myself of the opportunity of perusing- the Report of 
the Board of Agriculture for the year 1816. The numerous 
reflections, which this most extraordinary volume excited in 
my mind, I cannot even touch on in this closing sheet of a 
Work that has already extended far beyond my original pur- 
pose. But had I perused it at the commencement, I should 
still have felt it my duty to direct the main force of my ani- 
madversions against the demagogue class of State-empirics. 
I was not, indeed, ignorant of the aid, which they derived 



412 SPIRIT OF TRADE 

at length impracticable, for the gentry of the land, 
for the possessors of fixed property to retain the 
rank of their ancestors, or their own former esta- 
blishments, without joining in the general compe- 
tition under the influence of the same trading spirit. 
Their dependents were of course either selected 
from or driven into the same eddy ; while the temp- 
tation of obtaining more than the legal interest for 
their principal became more and more strong with 
all persons who, neither trading nor farming, had 
lived on the interest of their fortunes. It was in 
this latter class that the rash, and too frequently, 
the unprincipled projector found his readiest dupes. 
Had we but the secret history of the building specu- 
lations only in the vicinity of the metropolis, too 
many of its pages would supply an afflicting but 
instructive comment. That both here, and in all 
other departments, this increased momentum in the 
spirit of trade has been followed by results of the 
most desirable nature, I have myself,* exerted my 
best powers to evince, at a period when to present 
the fairest and most animating features of the sys- 

from other quarters : — nor am I now ashamed of not having- 
anticipated its extent. There is, however, one communica- 
tion (p. 208 to 227) from Mr. Mosely, from which, with 
the abatement only of the passage on tithes, I cannot with- 
hold my entire admiration. It almost redeems the remain- 
der of the Report. 

* In a variety of articles published at different periods in 
the Morning Post and Courier ; but with most success in the 
Essay, before cited, on Vulgar Errors on Taxation, which 
had the advantage of being transferred almost entire to the 



IN AGRICULTURE. 413 

tern, and to prove their vast and charm-like in- 
fluence on the power and resources of the nation 
appeared a duty of patriotism. Nothing, however, 
was advanced incompatible with the position, which 
even then I did not conceal, and which from the 
same sense of duty I am now attempting to display ; 
namely, that the extension of the commercial spirit 
into our agricultural system, added to the over- 
balance of the same spirit, even within its own 
sphere ; aggravated by the operation of our revenue 
laws ; and finally reflected in the habits, and ten- 
dencies of the labouring classes ; is the ground- 
work of our calamity, and the main predisposing 
cause, without which the late occasions would some 
of them not have existed, and the remainder not 
have produced the present distresses. 

That agriculture requires principles essentially 
different from those of trade ; that a gentleman 
ought not to regard his estate as a merchant his 
cargo, or a shopkeeper his stock, — admits of an 
easy proof from the different tenure of landed pro- 
perty,! and from the purposes of agriculture itself, 

columns of a daily paper, of the largest circulation, and from 
thence, in larger or smaller extracts, to several of our pro- 
vincial journals. It was likewise reprinted in two of the 
American Federalist papers : and a translation appeared, I 
have been told, in the Hamburgh Correspondenten. 

} The very idea of individual or private property in our 
present acceptation of the term, and according to the current 
notion of the right to it, was originally confined to moveable 
things : and the more moveable, the more susceptible of the 
nature of property. Proceeding from the more to the less 



414 THE ENDS OF AGRICULTURE 

which ultimately are the same as those of the State 
of which it is the offspring. For I do not include 
in the name of agriculture the cultivation of a few 
vegetables by the women of the less savage hunter 
tribes. If the continuance and independence of 
the State be its object, the final causes of the State 
must be its final causes. Let us suppose the ne- 
gative ends of a State already attained, namely, 
its own safety by means of its own strength, and 
the protection of person and property for all its 
members, there will then remain its positive ends : 



perfect right ; we* may bring- all the objects of an indepen- 
dent ownership under five heads: — namely, 1. precious 
stones, and other jewels of as easy transfer: — 2. precious 
metals, and foreign coin taken as weight of metal : — 3. mer- 
chandize, by virtue of the contract between the importer and 
the sovereign in whose person the unity and integrity of the 
common wealth were represented ; that is, after the settled 
price had been paid by the former for the permission to im- 
port, and received by the latter under the further obligation 
of protecting the same : — 4. the coin of the country in the 
possession of the natural subject; and last of all, and in 
certain cases, the live stock, the peculium a pecude. Hence, 
the minds of men were most familiar with the term in the 
case of Jews and aliens : till gradually, the privileges at- 
tached to the vicinity of the bishops and mitred abbots pre- 
pared an asylum for the fugitive vassal and the oppressed 
franklin, and thus laid the first foundations of a fourth class 
of freemen, that of citizens and burghers. To the feudal 
system we owe the forms, to the Church the substance of 
our liberty. As comment take, first, the origin of towns and 
cities ; next, the holy war waged against slavery and vil- 
lenage, and with such success that the law had barely to 
sanction opus jam consummation at the Restoration. 



AND THE STATE IDENTICAL. 415 

— 1. to make the means of subsistence more easy 
to each individual : — 2. to secure to each of its 
members the hope* of bettering his own condition 
or that of his children: — 3. the developement of 
those faculties which are essential to his humanity, 
that is, to his rational and moral being. Under the 
last head I do not mean those degrees of intellectual 
cultivation which distinguish man from man in the 
same civilized society, but those only that raise the 
civilized man above the barbarian, the savage, and 
the brute. I require, however, on the part of the 
State, in behalf of all its members, not only the 
outward means of knowing their essential duties 
and dignities as men and free men, but likewise, 
and more especially, the discouragement of all 
such tenures and relations as must in the very 
nature of things render this knowledge inert, and 
cause the good seed to perish as it falls. Such at 
least is the appointed aim of a State : and at 
whatever distance from the ideal mark the existing 
-circumstances of a nation may unhappily place the 

* The civilized man gives up those stimulants of hope 
and fear, the mixture or alternation of which constitutes the 
chief charm of the savage life : and yet his Maker has dis- 
tinguished him from the brute that perishes, by making hope 
an instinct of his nature and an indispensable condition of 
his moral and intellectual progression. But a natural in- 
stinct constitutes a natural right, as far as its gratification is 
compatible with the equal rights of others. Hence our an- 
cestors classed those who were incapable of altering their 
condition from that of their parents, as bondsmen or villeins, 
however advantageously they might otherwise be situated. 



416 THE NEGATIVE DUTIES 

actual statesman, still every movement ought to be 
in this direction. But the negative merit of not 
forwarding — the exemption from the crime of ne- 
cessitating — the debasement and virtual disfran- 
chisement of any class of the community, may be 
demanded of every State under all circumstances : 
and the Government that pleads difficulties in re- 
pulse or demur of this claim impeaches its own 
wisdom and fortitude. But as the specific ends of 
agriculture are the maintenance, strength, and se- 
curity, of the State, so (I repeat) must its ultimate 
ends be the same as those of the State : even as 
the ultimate end of the spring and wheels of a 
watch must be the same as that of the watch. Yet 
least of all things must we overlook or conceal, 
that morally and with respect to the character and 
conscience of the individuals, the blame of un- 
faithful stewardship is aggravated, in proportion as 
the difficulties are less, and the consequences, lying 
within a narrower field of vision, are more evident 
and affecting. An injurious system, the conni- 
vance at which we scarcely dare more than regret 
in the Cabinet or Senate of an Empire, may justify 
an earnest reprobation in the management of 
private estates : provided always, that the system 
only be denounced, and the pleadings confined to 
the court of conscience. For from this court only 
can the redress be awarded. All reform or inno- 
vation, not won from the free agent by the presen- 
tation of juster views and nobler interests, and 
which does not leave the merit of having effected 



OF EVERY STATE. 417 

it sacred to the individual proprietor, it were folly 
to propose, and worse than folly to attempt. 
Madmen only would dream of digging or blowing- 
up the foundation of a house in order to employ 
the materials in repairing the walls. Nothing* 
more can be asked of the State, no other duty is 
imposed on it, than to withhold or retract all ex- 
trinsic and artificial aids to an injurious system ; 
or at the utmost to invalidate in extreme cases such 
claims as have arisen indirectly from the letter or 
unforeseen operations of particular statutes : claims 
that instead of being contained in the rights of its 
proprietary trustees are encroachments on its own 
rights, and a destructive trespass on a part of its 
own inalienable and untransferable property — I 
mean the health, strength, honesty, and filial love, 
of its children. 

It would border on an affront to the under- 
standings of the members of our Landed Interest, 
were I to explain in detail what the plan and conduct 
would be of a gentleman ;* if, as the result of his 



* Or, (to put the question more justly as well as more 
candidly) of the land-owners collectively : — for who is not 
aware of the facilities that accompany a conformity with the 
general practice, or of the numerous hinderances that retard, 
and the final imperfection that commonly awaits, a deviation 
from it 1 On the distinction between things and persons 
all law human and divine is grounded. It consists in this : 
that the former may be used as mere means ; but the latter 
must not be employed as the means to an end without 
directly or indirectly sharing in that end. 
E E 



418 TRUE OBJECT OF LAND-OWNERS. 

own free conviction the marketable produce of his 
estates were made a subordinate consideration to the 
living and moral growth that is to remain on the land 
-—I mean a healthful, callous-handed but high-and- 
warm-hearted tenantry, twice the number of the 
present landless, parish-paid laborers, and ready to 
march off at the first call of their country with a Son 
of the House at their head, because under no appre- 
hension of being (forgive the lowness of the ex- 
pression) marched off at the whisper of a land- 
taster : — if the admitted rule, the paramount self- 
commandment, were comprised in the fixed resolve 
— I will improve my estate to the utmost ; and my 
rent-roll I will raise as much as, but no more than, 
is compatible with the three great ends (before 
enumerated) which being those of my country must 
be mine inclusively : — this, I repeat, it would be 
more than superfluous to particularize. It is a 
problem, the solution of which may be safely en- 
trusted to the common sense of every one who has 
the hardihood to ask himself the question. But 
how encouraging even the approximations to such 
a system, of what fair promise the few fragmentary 
samples are, may be seen in the Report of the 
Board of Agriculture for 1816, p. 11, from the Earl 
of Winchelsea's communication, in every paragraph 
of which wisdom seems to address us in behalf of 
goodness. 

But the plan of my argument requires the re- 
verse of this picture. I am to ask what the results 
would be, on the supposition that agriculture is 



DIFFERENT RULE IN TRADE I 419 

carried on in the spirit of trade ; and if the neces- 
sary answer coincide with the known general 
practice, to shew the connection of the conse- 
quences with the present state of distress and un- 
easiness. In trade, from its most innocent form 
to the abomination of the African commerce nomi- 
nally abolished after a hard fought-battle of twenty- 
years, no distinction is or can be acknowledged 
between things and persons. If the latter are 
part of the concern, they come under the denomi- 
nation of the former. Two objects only can be 
proposed in the management of an estate considered 
as stock in trade — first, that the returns shall be 
the largest, quickest, and securest possible ; and 
secondly, with the least out-goings in the providing, 
over-looking and collecting the same, — whether it 
be expenditure of money paid for other men's time 
and attention, or of the tradesman's own, which 
are to him money's worth, makes no difference in 
the argument. Am I disposing of a bale of goods ? 
The man whom I most love and esteem must yield 
to the stranger that outbids him ; or if it be sold 
on credit, the highest price, with equal security, 
must have the preference. I may fill up the de- 
ficiency of my friend's offer by a private gift, or 
loan ; but as a tradesman, I am bound to regard 
honesty and established character themselves, as 
things, as securities, for which the known unprin- 
cipled dealer may offer an unexceptionable substi- 
tute. Add to this, that the security being equal, 
I shall prefer, even at a considerable abatement of 



42X) ITS OPERATION 

price, the man who will take a thousand chests or 
bales at once, to twenty who can pledge them- 
selves only for fifty each. For I do not seek 
trouble for its own sake ; but among other advan- 
tages I seek wealth for the sake of freeing myself 
more and more from the necessity of taking trouble 
in order to attain it. The personal worth of those, 
whom I benefit in the course of the process, or 
whether the persons are really benefited or no, is 
no concern of mine. The market and the shop 
are open to all. To introduce any other principle 
in trade, but that of obtaining the highest price 
with adequate security for articles fairly described, 
would be tantamount to the position that trade 
ought not to exist. If this Jbe admitted, then what 
as a tradesman I cannot do, it cannot be my duty, 
as a tradesman, to attempt : and the only remain- 
ing question in reason or morality is — what are 
the proper objects of trade. If my estate be such, 
my plan must be to make the most of it, as I would 
of any other mode of capital. As my rents will 
ultimately depend on the quantity and value of the 
produce raised and brought into the best market 
from my land, I will entrust the latter to those 
who bidding the most have the largest capital to 
employ on it : and this I cannot effect but by di- 
viding it into the fewest tenures, as none but ex- 
tensive farms will be an object to men of extensive 
capital and enterprising minds. I must prefer this 
system likewise for my own ease and security. 
The farmer is of course actuated by the same mo- 



IN AGRICULTURE. 421 

tives as the landlord : and, provided they are both 
faithful to their engagements, the object of both 
will be : 1. the utmost produce that can be raised 
without injuring the estate ; 2. with the least pos- 
sible consumption of the produce on the estate 
itself; 3. at the lowest wages; and 4. with the 
substitution of machinery for human labor wbere- 
ever the former will cost less and do the same 
work. What are the modest remedies proposed 
by the majority of correspondents in the last Re- 
port of the Board of Agriculture ? ' Let measures 
be taken that rents, taxes, and wages be lowered, 
and the markets raised ! A great calamity has 
befallen us from importation, the lessened purchases 
of Government, and, " the evil of a superabundant 
harvest" of which we deem ourselves the more en- 
titled to complain, because " we had been long 
making 112 shillings per quarter of our corn," and 
of all other articles in proportion. As the best 
remedies for this calamity, we propose that we 
should pa} r less to our landlords, less to our laborers, 
nothing to our clergyman, and either nothing or 
very little to the maintenance of the Government 
and of the poor ; but that we should sell at our 
former prices to the consumer !' — In almost every 
page we find deprecations of the Poor Laws : and 
I hold it impossible to exaggerate their pernicious 
tendency and consequences as at present generally 
worked. But let it not be forgotten, that in agri- 
cultural districts three-fourths of the Poors' Rates 
are paid to healthy, robust, and (O sorrow and 



422 poor laws : 

shame !) industrious, hard- working 1 paupers in lieu 
of wages — (for men cannot at once work and 
starve) ; and therefore if there are twenty house- 
keepers in the parish, who are not holders of land, 
their contributions are so much bounty money to 
the latter. But the Poor Laws form a subject, which 
I should not undertake without trembling*, had I the 
space of a whole volume to allot to it. Suffice it 
to say that this enormous mischief is undeniably 
the offspring of the commercial system. In the 
only plausible work, that I have seen, in favor of 
our Poor Laws on the present plan, the defence 
is grounded ; first, on the expediency of having 
labor cheap, and estates let out in the fewest 
possible portions — in other words, of large farms 
and low wages — each as indispensable to the other, 
and both conjointly as the only means of drawing 
capital to the land, by which alone the largest 
surplus is attainable for the State ; that is, for the 
market, or in order that the smallest possible pro- 
portion of the largest possible produce may be con- 
sumed by the raisers and their families : — secondly, 
on the impossibility of supplying, as we have sup- 
plied, all the countries of the civilized world (India 
perhaps and China excepted), and of underselling 
them even in their own market if our working 
manufacturers were not secured by the State 
against the worst consequences of those failures, 
stagnations, and transfers, to which the different 
branches of trade are exposed, in a greater or less 
degree, beyond all human prevention ; or if the 



MANUFACTURING SYSTEM '. 423 

master manufacturers were compelled to give 
previous security for the maintenance of those 
whom they had, by the known law of human in- 
crease, virtually called into existence. 

Let me not be misunderstood. I do not myself 
admit this impossibility. I have already denied, 
and I now repeat the denial, that these are neces- 
sary consequences of our extended commerce. On 
the contrary, I feel assured that the spirit of com- 
merce is itself capable of being* at once counteracted 
and enlightened by the spirit of the State, to the 
advantage of both. But I do assert, that they are 
necessary consequences of the commercial spirit 
un-counteracted and un-enlightened, wherever 
trade has been carried to so vast an extent as it has 
been in England. I assert too, that, historically and 
as matter of fact, they have been the consequence 
of our commercial system. The laws of Lycurgus, 
like those of the inspired Hebrew Legislator, were 
anti-commercial : those of Numa and Solon were 
at least uncommercial. Now I ask myself, what 
the impression would have been on the Senate of 
the Roman or the Athenian Republic, if the fol- 
lowing proposal had been made to them and intro- 
duced by the following preamble. " Conscript Fa- 
thers, (or Senators of Athens !) it is well known to 
you, that circumstances being* the same and the 
time allowed proportional, the human animal may 
be made to multiply as easily, and at as small an 
expence, as your sheep or swine : which is meant, 
perhaps, in the fiction of our philosophers, that 



424 ITS PRINCIPLES APPLIED 

souls are out of all proportion more numerous than 
the bodies, in which they can subsist and be mani- 
fested. It is likewise known to you, Fathers ! that 
though in various States various checks have been 
ordained to prevent this increase of births from be- 
coming such as should frustrate or greatly endan- 
ger the ends for which freemen a re born ; yet the most 
efficient limit must be sought for in the moral and 
intellectual prerogatives of men, in their foresight, 
in their habituation to the comforts and decencies 
of society, in the pride of independence; but above 
all in the hope that enables men to withstand the 
tyranny of the present impulse, and in their ex- 
pectation of honour or discredit from the rank ? 
character, and condition of their children. Now 
there are proposed to us the speedy means of at 
once increasing the number of the rich, the wealth 
of those that are already such, and the revenues of 
the State : and the latter, Fathers ! to so vast an 
amount, that we shall be able to pay not only our 
own soldiers but those of the monarchs whom we 
may thus induce to become our allies. But for 
this it will be requisite and indispensable that all 
men of enterprise and sufficiency among us should 
be permitted, without restraint, to encourage, and 
virtually to occasion, the birth of many myriads 
of free citizens, who from their childhood are to be 
amassed in clusters and employed as parts of a 
mighty system of machinery. While all things 
prove answerable to the schemes and wishes of these 
enterprisers, the citizens thus raised and thus em- 
ployed by them will find an ample maintenance, 



TO ROME OR ATHENS. 425 

except in those instances where the individual may 
have rendered himself useless by the effects of his 
own vices. It must not, however, be disguised 
from you, that the nature of the employments and 
the circumstances to which these citizens will be 
exposed, will often greatly tend to render them in- 
temperate, diseased, and restless. Nor has it been 
yet made a part of the proposal, that the employers 
should be under any bond to counteract such inju- 
rious circumstances by education, discipline, or 
other efficient regulations. Still less may it be 
withholden from your knowledge, O Fathers of the 
State, that should events hereafter prove hostile 
to all or to any branch of these speculations, to 
many or to any one of the number that shall have 
devoted their wealth to the realization of the same — 
and the light, in which alone they can thrive, is 
confessedly subject to partial and even to total 
eclipses, which there are no means of precisely 
foretelling — the guardian planets to whose conjunc- 
tion their success is fatally linked, will at uncertain 
periods, for a longer or shorter time, act in malig- 
nant oppositions — then, Fathers, the principals are 
to shift for themselves, and leave the disposal of 
the calamitous, and therefore too probably tur- 
bulent, multitude, now unemployed and useless, to 
the mercy of the community, and the solicitude of 
the State ; or else to famine, violence, and the ven- 
geance of the laws !" 

If, on the maxims of ancient prudence, on the 
one hand not enlightened, on the other not dazzled, 
by the principles of trade, the immediate answer 



426 HOW SPIRIT OF TRADE IN AGRICULTURE 

would have been : — " We should deem it danger 
and detriment, were we to permit so indefinite and 
improvident increase even of our slaves and Helots : 
in the case of free citizens, our countrymen, who 
are to swear to the same laws, and worship at the 
same altars, it were profanation ! May the Gods 
avert the omen I" — if this, I say, would have been 
their answer, it may be safely concluded that the 
connivance at the same scheme, much more that 
the direct encouragement of it, must be attributed 
to that spirit which the ancients did not recognize, 
namely, the spirit of commerce. 

But I have shewn that the same system has gra- 
dually taken possession of our agriculture. What 
have been the results ? For him who is either 
unable or unwilling to deduce the whole truth from 
the portion of it revealed in the following extract 
from Lord Winchelsea's Report, whatever I could 
have added would have been equally in vain. His 
Lordship speaking of the causes which oppose all at- 
tempts to better the labourers' condition, mentions, 
as one great cause, the dislike which the farmers 
in general have to seeing the labourers rent any 
land. Perhaps, (he continues) " one of the reasons 
for their disliking this is, that the land, if not 
occupied by the labourers, would fall to their own 
share ; and another I am afraid is, that they rather 
wish to have the labourers more dependent upon 
them ; for which reasons they are always desirous 
of hiring the house and land occupied by a labourer, 
under pretence, that by those means the landlord 
will be secure of his rent, and that they will keep 



INJURES THE LABOURER, 427 

the house in repair. This the agents of estates are 
too apt to give into, as they find it much less trouble 
to meet six than sixty tenants at a rent-day, and 
by these means avoid the being sometimes obliged 
to hear the wants and complaints of the poor. All 
parties therefore join in persuading the landlord, 
who it is natural to suppose (unless he has time and 
inclination to investigate the matter very closely) 
will agree to this their plan, from the manner in 
which it comes recommended to him : and it is in 
this manner that the labourers have been dispos- 
sessed of their cow-pastures in various parts of the 
midland counties. The moment the farmer obtains 
his wish, he takes every particle of the land to him- 
self, and re-lets the house to the labourer, who by 
these means is rendered miserable ; the poor rate 
increased; the value of the estate to the land- 
owner diminished ; and the house suffered to go to 
decay; which once fallen the tenant will never 
rebuild, but the landlord must, at a considerable 
expence. Whoever travels through the midland 
counties, and will take the trouble of inquiring, 
will generally receive for answer, that formerly 
there were a great many cottagers who kept cows, 
but that the land is now thrown to the farmers ; and 
if he inquires, still farther, he will find that in those 
parishes the poor rates have increased in an amaz- 
ing degree, more than according to the average 
rise throughout England." — In confirmation of his 
Lordship's statement I find in the Agricultural Re- 
ports, that the county, in which I read of nothing 
but farms of 1000, 1500, 2000, and 2500 acres, is 



428 AND SOCIETY. 

likewise that in which the poor rates are most nu- 
merous, the distresses of the poor most grievous, 
and the prevalence of revolutionary principles the 
most alarming. But if we consider the subject on 
the largest scale and nationally, the consequences 
are, that the most important rounds in the social 
ladder are broken, and the hope which above all 
other things distinguishes the free man from the 
slave, is extinguished. The peasantry therefore 
are eager to have their children add as early as 
possible to their wretched pittances, by letting 
them out to manufactories ; while the youths take 
every opportunity of escaping to towns and cities. 
And if I were questioned, as to my opinion, re- 
specting the ultimate cause of our liability to dis- 
tresses like the present, the cause of what has been 
called a vicious (that is excessive) population with 
all the furies that follow in its train — in short, of 
a state of things so remote from the simplicity of 
nature, that we have almost deprived Heaven itself 
of the power of blessing us ; a state in which with- 
out absurdity, a superabundant harvest can be com- 
plained of as an evil, and the recurrence of the 
same a ruinous calamity, — I should not hesitate to 
answer — " the vast and disproportionate number 
of men who are to be fed from the produce of the 
fields, on which they do not labour." 

What then is the remedy ;-4who are the physi- 
cians ? The reply may be anticipated. An evil 
which has come on gradually, and in the growth of 
which all men have more or less conspired, cannot be 
removed otherwise than gradually, and by the joint 



MODE OF REMEDY. 429 

efforts of all. If we are a Christian nation, we must 
learn to act nationally as well as individually, as 
Christians. We must remove half truths, the most 
dangerous of errors, (as those of the poor visionaries 
called Spenceans), by the whole truth. The Go- 
vernment is employed already in retrenchments ; 
but he who expects immediate relief from these, 
or who does not even know that if they do any 
thing at all, they must for the time tend to aggravate 
the distress, cannot have studied the operation of 
public expenditure. 

I am persuaded that more good would be done, 
not only ultimate and permanent, but immediate, 
good, by the abolition of the lotteries accompanied 
by a public and Parliamentary declaration of the 
moral and religious grounds that had determined the 
Legislature to this act ; of their humble confidence 
of the blessing of God on the measure ; and of their 
hopes that this sacrifice to principle, as being more 
exemplary from the present pressure on the revenue 
of the State, would be the more effective in restoring 
confidence between man and man ; — I am deeply 
convinced, that more sterling and visible benefits 
would be derived from this one solemn proof and 
pledge of moral fortitude and national faith, than 
from retrenchments to a tenfold greater amount. 
Still more, if our legislators should pledge them- 
selves at the same time that they would hereafter 
take counsel for the gradual removal or counterac- 
tion of all similar encouragements and temptations 
to vice and folly, that had, alas ! been tolerated 
hitherto, as the easiest way of supplying the ex- 



430 MODE OF REMEDY. 

chequer. And truly, the financial motives would 
be strong indeed, if the revenue laws in question 
were but half as productive of money to the state 
as they are of guilt and wretchedness to the people. 
Our manufacturers must consent to regulations ; 
our gentry must concern themselves in the educa- 
tion as well as in the instruction of their natural 
clients and dependents, must regard their estates as 
secured indeed from all human interference by every 
principle of law, and policy, but yet as offices of 
trust, with duties to be performed, in the sight of 
God and their country. Let us become a better 
people, and the reform of all the public (real or sup- 
posed) grievances, which we use as pegs whereon 
to hang our own errors and defects, will follow of 
itself. In short, let every man measure his efforts 
by his power and his sphere of action, and do all 
he can do. Let him contribute money where he 
cannot act personally : but let him act personally 
and in detail wherever it is practicable. Let us pal- 
liate where we cannot cure, comfort where we cannot" 
relieve : and for the rest rely upon the promise of 
the King of Kings by the mouth of his Prophet, 
Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters. 



FINIS. 



? 82 



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